Let’s Make A Deal Part Two: Human Cap

While we’re in a deal-making mode, here’s an idea loosely related to all this New York back and forth. Isn’t there a grand bargain possible whereby a city or state uses value-added measures (pdf) to remove the absolute lowest performing teachers, say 10 percent, including veterans and novices, but at the same time makes a significant investment in (a) teacher salaries and (b) an evaluation system for teachers (including real training for school leaders on this issue) that is actually meaningful and can help differentiate and encourage improvement among the vast middle of teachers who are neither the highest-performers or the bad apples?* Seems like something a foundation might want to help underwrite, too. *Look for an ES paper with some ideas on this next week.