Not Ready for Prime Time

 According to  Dana Goldstein DC school's are suffering a loss of competent, effective teachers because of the Rhee-based teacher harassment policies. Matthew Yglesias responds by pointing out that teachers get more money, or at least some of them do. This is, of course, not the point. DC and, in fact, any school district that decides to go the harass the teacher mode of "school reform" is going to suffer the same loss of good teachers. Why? People don't teach to make money. Teachers teach because they like to teach. Change the workplace rules, turn teaching into exam prep for the for-profit test making industry, and pay more: you'll get people who want to make money but don't care so much about teaching. Use the current system and pay more and you'll get more of the same, which is too say lots of good teachers working to help their students be all they can be.

 That's right, 85% of the teachers are good to excellent obviously the key to making the schools better is harassing them and the students with testing regimes. Not, say, alleviating poverty because that would be hard work.