Kerry and Education

In education policy, teachers matter most. And Kerry's ideas reflect this truth. Jonathan Schorr, in The Washington Monthly, discusses John Kerry's "New Bargain with American Teachers" plan. Details of the plan are on the Kerry website, here. As Schorr notes, Kerry's plan challenges some policies dear to the teachers unions; namely, the seniority based pay increases and the more-or-less guaranteed veteran tenures. Quickly, the plan offers pay raises in return for student performance, some greater ease in firing bad teachers, and incentives to keep excellent teachers in poor schools.
From Kerry's site:

This is what the Kerry-Edwards plan will offer:

* Recruit great teachers by raising pay where we need them the most, as well as scholarships and loan forgiveness through a new teacher corps.
* Retain teachers through better preparation and support, including holding schools of education accountable for improved results, and offering more mentoring on the job.
* Increase parental involvement using new technology and proven successes.

This is what the Kerry-Edwards plan will ask:

* Require all new teachers to pass rigorous entry tests.
* Require fair, fast procedures for improving or replacing teachers who do not perform.
* Require greater pay for teachers who excel in participating schools, including excellence that is demonstrated through improved student performance.
* Provide more support for schools to turn around and more rewards when they do.

Teachers come first.
From Schorr:

Look carefully at the education reform literature, however, and you'll find evidence that is both hopeful and frustrating. The hopeful finding is that good teachers can make all the difference. Over the last 15 years, dozens of studies examining failing schools that have been turned around have shown that the secret to success is high quality teaching. OneTexas study showed that putting strong teachers into weakly performing classes nearly closed the gap between poor and affluent students' math scores. The Teaching Commission, a blue-ribbon bipartisan panel headed by former IBM chief Louis Gerstner that has studied the available school reform data, concluded: "The proven value of excellent teaching all but demolishes the notion that socioeconomic status is the most important determinant of what kids can learn."

The problems, Schorr continues, are numerous: low pay compared to other professions, a "mind-numbing credentialing process," the best teachers are too often not in the worst schools, and so many of those that are in the worst schools have devolved to merely babysitting the kids.

Kerry's plan would work like this: Teachers who can demonstrate excellence--by proving through standardized tests that their pupils are learning well--would be eligible for pay raises of about $5,000. Kerry would use similar bonuses to attract teachers to schools that are suffering from staff shortages (typically low-performing urban and rural schools) and to subject areas that have too few teachers, such as math and the sciences. Kerry would use the money not just as rewards for teachers, but also to provide incentives for schools and districts to create paths for career advancement, so that high-performing teachers could be promoted to master-teacher or mentor spots.

And apparently, even Chester Finn likes the plan.