The Sacramento City Unified School District is one of a number of districts in the country participating in a federally-funded program called The Talent Transfer Initiative. This program, which I just learned about, pays selected teachers a $20,000 bonus to transfer to a targeted “high-needs school.”

Though I’ve written about my general concerns about extrinsic motivation and financial rewards, that’s not my primary question. After all, teachers who work at high-needs schools have been able to get their student-loans forgiven (as mine were), but I suspect that isn’t a huge reason why people choose to work there.

And, to tell you the truth, I’m not overly concerned right now about how it will be used in our district. I think our Superintendent will try his best to avoid some of the potential dangers that drove me to write this post. However, I’m not so sure about how it will be applied in other districts (and will be very interested in hearing from others who might know more).

One issue is the criteria used to determine eligible teachers. It appears, and I may be wrong, that it’s primarily focused on test scores. I’m not convinced that test scores are the best way to judge teacher quality. On top of that, if some districts are going to use these test scores as the primary criteria, I wonder if they realize that just because a teacher’s class in an upper middle class school may have high test scores, that does not necessarily mean that the teacher has the skills to work in a high needs school.

Secondly, the bonus does not appear to be available to teachers who presently work in the targeted high needs school and may be equally as talented. If that’s the case, that doesn’t appear to be particularly fair to me. (Even though the website does not mention it, I just learned that there is indeed a bonus for eligible teachers who are presently at the targeted skill, though it is a smaller amount)

These are just sort of rambling thoughts, and I’m primarily interested in hearing reader feedback. Are you in a district using this initiative? How is it going? Do you share my concerns? Am I misrepresenting the program?

A new book titled International Perspectives on the Goals of Universal Basic and Secondary Education looks pretty interesting. It examines the goals of education in different countries around the world. It’s edited by Joel Cohen.

Here’s a quote from a press release:

In surveys of American stakeholders, including parents, educators, school board members and legislators, the results are surprisingly consistent, and reach far beyond basic academic skills and knowledge. “Most people wanted students to develop skills in critical thinking and problem solving, social skills and work ethic, citizenship and community responsibility, physical and emotional health, love of the arts and literature and preparation for skilled work that does not require a college degree,” Cohen says. By contrast, the Bush-era law, now up for revision and renewal, overwhelmingly relies on the standardized testing of students’ reading and math skills as the measure of schools’ success.

Published in December, International Perspectives on the Goals of Universal Basic and Secondary Education, includes a sweeping range of views on education, with chapters written by authors from every inhabited continent and many cultures and religions. Cohen co-edited the book with Martin B. Malin, executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “It turns out that people have amazingly diverse views of the goals of education,” Cohen says. “We hear about the need to teach tolerance and open-minded understanding of sacred texts in the Arab world from the late, great former minister of education in Tunisia. We hear from the headmaster of a Nigerian Koranic school about the need to inculcate moral behavior. A Chinese educator favors education for world commerce and collaboration in business. A Singaporean diplomat favors developing skepticism and a questioning attitude in the spirit of Socrates.

I posted earlier about the great Rethinking Schools article on Teach For America.

You can now read it directly on the Rethinking Schools website. The Spring edition has just been put online.

What Really Happens When We Pay People for Test Scores? is the title of today’s post by Claus von Zastrow at the Public Insights blog. It’s Claus’ take on the study covered by TIME Magazine last week on paying students for increased grades, test scores, etc. (see The Problem With “Bribing Students”).

Claus has written another “must-read” piece here.

According to The Educated Guess, Linda Darling-Hammond — education researcher, author, and professor — will be giving a public briefing today in Washington, D.C. on an effort she is working on with the majority of states to revamp the current standardized testing regimen most of us have to use.

She, and the states that support her effort to win a $160 million grant to develop new tests (I’m assuming this is part of the Obama Administration’s effort that I wrote about in So This Is What Obama Was Talking About…) from the Department of Education.

In one of her briefing papers, Assess Beyond Basic Skills, she explains that new tests need to be developed that use “performance assessment.” This is how she defines it:

For many people, performance assessment is most easily defined by what it is not:specifically, it is not multiple-choice testing. In a performance assessment, ratherthan choosing among pre-determined options, students must construct an answer,produce a product, or perform an activity. From this perspective, performance assessment encompasses a very wide range of activities, from completing a sentence with a few words (short-answer), to writing a thorough analysis (essay), to conducting and analyzing a laboratory investigation (hands-on).

Because they allow students to construct or perform an original response rather than just recognizing a potentially right answer out of a list provided, performance assessments can measure students’ cognitive thinking and reasoning skills and their ability to apply knowledge to solve realistic, meaningful problems.

Let’s hope her group wins the grant!