The above headline is the title of a report upon which I based my column today arguing for performance-based pay for teachers. I went beyond the should we, shouldn't we, argument - we absolutely should! - to examine what kind of evaluation system would need to be in place before districts could determine a teacher's merit and thus, their pay.

This report by the National Council on Teacher Quality goes beyond the merit pay issue to offer a sharp and prescriptive look at how Seattle manages its teaching corps. Many things I knew, such as Seattle gives its biggest payraises to its most experienced teachers, leaving newer teachers - who might be performing better - out in the cold. But I didn't know about the correlation between a school's poverty rate and teacher absences. Ok, some of you might say this one is a no brainer. A teacher presiding over a wild and large class might be more likely to take more time off or burn out sooner. But the impact of frequent and prolonged teacher absences on student learning is something I don't hear the adults in this conversation talk about.

I dug out this Washington Post article on President Obama's efforts to use federal grants to spur more districts into experimenting with merit pay.

Oh, and the New Yorker article I mentioned is titled "The Rubber Room" and can be found here. What I found most distressing about the piece, and this one about Seattle teachers, is that it takes an appropriate protection like due process and pushes it out into bizarro world. It shouldn't take years to fire an employee. At the end, when the firing is upheld, can the school district ask for the years of salary back? An extreme level of due process may sound attractive but the costs, financial and otherwise, are borne by all of us.