The whole no student left behind thing, seems to have done more harm than good. Some students need to be left behind, whether their fault or their teacher, promoting them does no one any good.

Yeah salary is a huge issue and boggles my mind. I know what I make, I know what NFL players make, and I see a teacher make a fraction of that, and just can't fathom the logic. It seems to be one of those "just the way it is" things, with no logic or sense behind it.

I think schools and districts would definitely do better if left to their own devices, with a minute amount of oversite. your ISDs sound similar to magnet schools which make sense to me. Offer those specialized classes at a special institution with seperate funding etc. Public schools should be allowed to focus on the core things kids need to learn.

You're right on private school, and I'm all for letting them exist. But want nothing to do with them. They can charge what they like, reject whom they like, and all that, without a bloody red cent of my money to support them :)

More than just different metric per school, I think it's a matter of more than one metric. It shoudln't just be scores. It should be scores, % improvement from Sept -> June, etc. I agree, there's no single universal metric, but I think a good approach is to weigh several factors. It's the picking and choosing of metrics that is partly to blame now. You're right some schools can't fail, through no work of their own, and get good marks for no reason.

As far as private schools — I think they have a place in society. They give parents the ability to teach religious or specialized material. I don't think that it is right for public dollars to be funding them, however. This goes with my thoughts of separation of church and state… Why should my public dollars support the Catholic school down the street (who has the legal right to discriminate against its applicants), where the same is not available for my religious views.

Michigan does have one thing going for it in regards to how the schools are setup. Each area (typically a tri-county area) are setup into super-districts. All the school income from taxes are pooled together and split among the districts in the area. This helps with the rich school vs. poor school issues (the money is split based on number of students, not property taxes). They also have "ISD"'s or intermediate school district classes, which allow for very specialized classes, that may only support a few kids per school be taught. For example, in the ISD I worked in, they offered baking, banking, diesel tech, CAD, computer programming etc., all classes that a normal district could afford to do. Students would go to this specialized school for two hours a day, free to the student.

We have a real problem with teacher pay in the industry. First off, to get your teaching certificate, it is required that you complete college, and have a reasonably high grade. If you graduated with below a 3.2, forget about most schools. Next, you need to take classes for two years, in addition to student-teaching. This is unpaid, and full time. Finally, when you finally finish that, you need to get a job. Average starting salary for a K-12 teacher is like $32,000 (in Michigan), and $36,000 for HS. Figuring that you now have racked up at least $50,000 in just education loans, you are in a really bad place. At least doctors can pay off their debt within 10 years.

Now, you are teaching at a school. Most teachers are afforded less than $200 in supplies for 35 students. Anything above this, you are on your own. Many of the books are often state-mandated, and, if you are lucky, 10 years old. In recent years, the Federal Government also started removing state guidelines to teaching curriculum, in favor of standardized tests, similar to the IGAP, STANFORD, and the No-Child-Left-Behind tests. These leave very little room for creativity to help inspire students, as they need to learn XYZ by this date, and ABC by this date, take two weeks taking mandated tests to make sure they learned it, and move on. It's become very debilitating.

I guess the one problem with this view is that badly managed companies die, but bad schools ruin lives.

I think the problem with test scores is that in some areas it's very easy for average teachers to get good results – a specific example would be my computing class where most of us got A grades, as most of us knew more about programming before we started the class than the teacher or the course provided. He was useless.

In other areas, you can be battling parents who are hostile to education, and kids entering the school who still have literacy problems. Now there's a lot that can be done in schools like that, but you're never going to achieve the A- grades of a school in a middle-class area. So the metric these people prefer is 'value added' – how much difference you can make to the pupils predicted level of attainment.

The teachers in good schools, on the other hand, prefer the absolute score measure – it's very difficult for them to add value (boost grades above predicted) when 70% are getting top grade anyway. On that measure they come out worse than the school lifting a fail grade to a bare pass.

I guess the question is whether there is a universal metric that can be used, or whether different schools need different metrics. And I think, sadly, they do.

I'd also concur with the comments about taking things out of centralised control, with one caveat – our local education authority was, itself, closed down by central government, due to years of below average results, and deservedly so – it's not the only area with inner city schools. Local democracy had failed to address the problem (well, when the population are proud to be ignorant, why would they want that to change!).

I put a great deal of the blame, on society in general, including parents. As a whole we seem, to think teachers are doing it for love not money, so we pay them crap. Then parents think that teachers are baby sitters. Worse yet, baby sitters they'll sue if they discipline the child. My mom was in PTA all through my elementary years and knew my teachers by name on sight. I think it made a huge difference. Parents seem to treat schools as some sort of black hole that doesn't require their involvement. Drop a kid off stupid and ill behaved, and pick them up a well rounded socially adjusted person. But don't touch or discipline to do it.

I forgot to add in my first post, we cannot devalue a parents role in the education of the child. T sees it all the time. The child with involved parents gets better grades. I think parental involvement is more important than anything a teacher can do.

I never said metrics can't be gamed, but from what I have read/heard. Teachers can't even agree on a metric. some want test scores, some say those aren't the right one. etc. I don't think metrics are the solution, but I think they help. if nothing else a metric can point out what should be obvious. And yeah there will be gamers, they're everywhere, and we try to work around them. You're right a strong dept head knows who sucks and who doesn't. Good principles do too. They just need the power to round file those losers.