Solution Two: Focus on School Incentives. Same Amount of Money Should Yield Better Results
by Eric A.
Op-Ed
Sacramento Bee
Viewpoints: Test evaluation put teachers on the spot
Eric A. Hanushek
Special to The Bee
Published Friday, Nov. 12, 2010
In an unexpected action last summer, the Los Angeles Times published the ratings of teacher effectiveness for 6,000 teachers by name. This is a potential game-changer.
The publication created a firestorm. The unions were apoplectic. A vocal set of commentators attacked this action from a variety of viewpoints. Nonetheless, it shows signs of spreading – to New York City and elsewhere.
The New York Sun
Now that the state Court of Appeals has once and for all settled the New York City school finance lawsuit, state and city officials must soon initiate the next necessary discussion, which should prove much more interesting — about what needs to be done to improve the city's schools.
The 13-year-old Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit — perhaps the most important national case about school finance — claimed that funding of city schools was inadequate to provide a sound basic education.
New York Post
June 30, 2003 -- THE state of schooling in New York City returned to the news Thursday with the highest court coming down on the side that the city's schools fail to meet constitutional requirements. The court has now turned the spotlight back on the state Legislature to "fix things."
Court decisions on school-finance issues are always expected to be a mixture of constitutional arguments, public-policy views and political cross-currents.
Education Week
By our cultural heritage we are led to believe that the performance of students can be improved by providing more resources to the schools. This would allow schools to provide more individualized instruction, to hire more qualified teachers, and to expand program offerings. But what is often missed in current discussions is that this is exactly the experiment that we have been conducting. School expenditures per pupil, after allowing for inflation, almost doubled between 1960 and 1975.
The Wall Street Journal
The nation is watching to see what happens with New York City school finance. After a dozen years in the courts, the case of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. New York is now back at the Court of Appeals for a final judgment about the added appropriations that the legislature must send to the city. This judgment is, however, unlikely to be the final statement. If the legislature must come up with an incredible sum of money close to the more than $5 billion currently on the table, it may well balk, precipitating a true constitutional crisis.