The latest column from Newsweek?s Jonathan Alter features an interview with the Microsoft entrepreneur. Alter and Gates discuss innovation in education.
If you thought that Alter?s previous attack on entrenched teachers? unions was a fluke, prepare to be shocked. In one passage, he points to ?fundamental school reform (not the fake kind pushed by teachers unions).?
Later, Alter labels teacher tenure a ?quality-killer? and posits a reason for the absence of simple software that would offer basic statistical information about teacher and student performance:
Everyone in education knows why: unions have simply prevented teachers from being judged, even in part, on whether their students improve during the course of the year. It’s no surprise that Gates is a believer in merit pay and incentive pay and has little use for teachers colleges as presently constituted because there’s no evidence that having a master’s degree improves teacher performance. You never hear Gates or his people talk about highly qualified teachers, only highly effective ones.
I can hear Terry Stoops now saying, ?You tell ?em, Jon!?
