There are multiple problems with education. Linking teacher pay to student results is something I'm undecided on. On the one hand, I've seen the effects of grade inflation in Sweden and that's really bad. On the other hand, I know of cases where a teacher very clearly can have a tremendous effect on the class, making me suspect that the "teacher effect" is so large that it should be incentived.
I do think there is a middle-ground here between the few people offering up serious debate in the thread. We do need to increase the status and wages of teachers, on that I'm with Torie. Al, why you are correct that people interested only in making money will never be teachers, you're over-looking that it is a sliding scale. In Sweden teachers, after many years of education and after having run up a good-sized college debt, get paid only just above what blue-collar workers get. If you want people with academic skills to go into teaching the wage-gap between what they can get in other professions cannot be too big. However, wages is not as big a part of it as is sometimes thought. The psychological status of teaching has to be raised and that has to do with a move (not all the way, mind you, but a move) towards the old hierarchy; teachers need to get some respect from students for their knowledge and merits. If they were to get respect they would start to earn it better too. The whole "teachers suck" mentality displayed on here is a big part of why people don't want to be teachers in teh first place.
Moreover, I disagree with Al that academic merits aren't important. Sure, being able to teach is important but what earns you respect from the students and what makes you able to teach at all is your actual knowledge and general intelligence. This is at least very clear to me from my own experience. I've had teachers who have been very enthusiastic and come up with all sorts of pedagogic ideas but they were, to be blunt, too dumb and knew their subject to superficially to actually teach us much in the end. The best teachers know their subject. Being abe to teach always fundamentally derives from your own knowledge of what you are teaching.
This was a rant, but I could have done worse.
Education is a passionate subject for me, because of what Torie pointed out. A "liberal" in my, the European, sense of the word, society rests largely on a publicly financed education system which creates true equal opportunity. And for that to happen there are elements of left-wing dogma that must be thrown out. I'm seeing in Sweden what is happening right now with our education system. The system we used to have, from the 40s to the 70s, was standardized, centralized, equal and very good. In some respects it'sa gone era and won't return, but now the public system basically suck which leaves the disadvantaged kids on the sidewalks while the priveleged ones get by anyway through other channels. And that disgusts me.
