Word: merite
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...musicians that are looking for a topeducation as well as the broad liberal arts experience, it’s fairly well known,” he adds.Rezzo is not only getting a master’s degree; he’s getting monetary aid. Unlike Harvard, the NEC offers merit-based scholarships. “NEC’s been really generous as far as helping me out with what is otherwise a large tuition,” he says. HARVARDWOOD HELPSThough such opportunities are not available for ever artform, those students interested in the entertainment arts have taken matters...
...Beyond Merit PayThere are better ways. Florida and Houston might have avoided their mistakes if they had examined some of the more thoughtful approaches to rewarding good teaching that are being tried elsewhere-programs that actively involve teachers and look at more than one measure of how they do their job. In Denver, for example, Professional Compensation, or ProComp, is the product of a seven-year collaboration among the teachers' union, the district and city hall. Rolled out last school year, ProComp includes nine ways for teachers to raise their earnings, some through bonuses and some through bumps in salary...
...There's little research on what makes for a successful merit-pay system, but several factors seem critical, says Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. Denver's program includes many of them: a careful effort to earn teacher buy-in to the plan, clarity about how it works, multiple ways of measuring merit, rewards for teamwork and schoolwide success, and reliable financing. In fact, Denver's voters agreed to pay an extra $25 million a year in taxes for nine years to support the program...
...Another impressive model is the Teacher Advancement Program, or TAP, created by the Milken Family Foundation in 1999 and now in place in 180 schools in 14 states and Washington. TAP is more than a merit-pay program. At TAP schools, some of which are unionized, raises are based on the teachers' performance-which is measured by a combination of structured observations made four to six times a year and student test results, using a Sanders-style value-added formula. The best TAP teachers can climb the professional ladder in three ways: remaining in the classroom but becoming a mentor...
...good goal for an entire nation in need of better-quality teaching. As U.S. school districts embark on hundreds of separate experiments involving merit pay, some lessons seem clear. If the country wants to pay teachers like professionals-according to their performance, rather than like factory workers logging time on the job-it has to provide them with other professional opportunities, like the chance to grow in the job, learn from the best of their peers, show leadership and have a voice in decision-making, including how their work is judged. Making such changes would require a serious investment...