A thousand things advance, nine hundred and ninety nine retreat: that is progress. --Henri Frederic Amiel It's sad to think academics and education policy

A thousand things advance, nine hundred and ninety nine retreat: that is progress. --Henri Frederic Amiel It's sad to think academics and education policy wonks are still struggling with the question of what is the fair market value of teachers in 2010? I'd bet two generations from now it's going to be common sense to say "great teachers are 10x more productive than average teachers, so let's incentive that behavior." (Hmm, doesn't that sound just like the conventional wisdom about another certain profession we all know about here?). Why is it such a struggle to realize that now? What absolutely kills me is that we have all of these super smart people dedicating their careers to this, and billions of tax payer dollars spent, and the education system that will eventually become the consensus is going to resemble the earliest modern education system in 19th century Germany/Prussia. (It's a fascinating history itself—the US public school system was originally designed as clone of the German system.) Oh and after incentiving and selecting teachers for teaching talent based on performance becomes the norm, here is the next question that the education system will confront: Are great teachers who get to spend one academic year with their students much less effective than even greater teachers who instead stick with the same group of students, and teach the kids for several years of k-12? After a million studies, experimental schools, and policy debates by people who don't even know what they're talking about, the new consensus will be yes, the greatest teachers are the most effective when they can become semi-permanent tutors for kids over longer periods of time. And then we will have arrived back at the original German system of grad-level teachers who are state-funded, private full-time tutors for small groups of kids.