Readers have probably noticed that I'm favorably disposed to Barack Obama, but his modest embrace of merit pay schemes doesn't seem like a very good reason to be excited about his campaign even if you accept the premise (as I guess I do) that he's correct on the merits here. This simply isn't much of a federal issue. Presidential primary campaign talk about teachers is always going to be dominated by efforts to court union support precisely because education policy is such a tiny proportion of what a president actually does.
If Ruth Marcus genuinely wants to promote some kind of education reform initiatives -- rather than dreaming up reasons to carp about Democrats -- she should find some state-level politicians who actually make the bulk of the education policy and give them some backup in efforts to buck entrenched interests.
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This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/07/merit-pay-so-what/43130/
