This article says they are only going to hire great teachers,
Who defines 'great'? Is this an objective measurement? If so, what are the metrics?
they are going to pay them top dollar,
Thanks. "They", of course, being the taxpayer (whether or not they have children that attend the government schools).
and they are going to see if these teachers produce better results with some of the hardest-to-teach students in the system.
In most businesses, you produce results first, and then you get rewarded. This approach is 'odd':
Reward first.
Then check results.
Then what?
If the results are great/good - give out a higher reward? If the results are dismal - make the teachers pay back their 'top dollar' bonuses? I doubt it.
What part of this are you complaining about?
Actually most of it (see my comments above). However my primary comments were addressed towards the concept of breaking the school system out of the hands of government. It certainly disrupts our 'comfort zone' (seeing how we've gotten comfortable with increasing levels of mediocrity from our schools) - but the benefits would be great. Better schools. Better opportunities for good teachers. Accountability. AND smaller government.
According to the article:
There will be telephone and in-person interviews, and applicants will have to submit multiple forms of evidence attesting to their students’ achievement and their own prowess; only those scoring at the 90th percentile in the verbal section of the GRE, GMAT or similar tests need apply. The process will culminate in three live teaching auditions.
Of course the article states that the experiment calls into question "how teachers should be selected, compensated and judged", so this may or may not be the best way of selecting "great" teachers.
"They", of course, being the taxpayer (whether or not they have children that attend the government schools).
It is hard to tell for certain from the article, but it sounds as though the school itself will not cost more per student than other schools, but that the school will eliminate other costs and positions (making teachers do those jobs as well), have less technology than other schools, and have higher class sizes so that almost all the money spent on the school can go toward paying the higher teacher salaries.
However my primary comments were addressed towards the concept of breaking the school system out of the hands of government. It certainly disrupts our 'comfort zone' (seeing how we've gotten comfortable with increasing levels of mediocrity from our schools) - but the benefits would be great. Better schools. Better opportunities for good teachers. Accountability. AND smaller government.
This will be a government school, so I suspect there is no way you would like it no matter how it was constituted, but the stated purpose is to provide "Better schools. Better opportunities for good teachers.[and] Accountability."
Would you at least concede that since it is making the unions uncomfortable and challenging their way of doing things, it might be a good start and/or a useful experiment?