Yesterday, I planned to give some right-wing nut named Bill Hammond a vigorous stomping. But I ran out of time.
Today, however, I realized that it won't take long to refute Hammond's ill-informed vision for improving schools, in which he recites some of the Wingnut Holy Words:
Currently, the salary scale for teachers is based on academic credentials and seniority. Compensation must be restructured to provide increased pay for teachers who achieve exemplary student performance. Again, what works in the private sector can work in Texas schools. Texas employers pay their employees based on performance, which gives them the ability to reward their best workers.
Here's the problem with wild-eyed hypercapitalists like Hammond: they assume that everyone, like them, is motivated primarily by money. Therefore, all problems can be solved by dangling money in well-chosen places.
But people are motivated by all sorts of factors in addition to greed: love, laziness, the creative imperative, the desire for immortality, the desperate need to catch a good buzz, and so on.
The assumption that you can lead teachers to excellence by tossing a trail of cash in their path rests on a very strange belief that most teachers get into the profession to make a quick buck.
Which leads me to believe that the words "president and CEO of the Austin-based Texas Association of Business" which are included in Hammond's bio must be the latest euphemism for "insane asylum".
SPACEDARK
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