What the hell are we paying you people for?

If you don’t get the result you want, redesign the study

From the AP via the Strib today:

Offering big bonuses to teachers failed to raise students' test scores in a three-year study released Tuesday that calls into question the Obama administration's push for merit pay to improve education.

This was a big disappointment to the people who ran the study:

"I think most people agree today that the current way in which we compensate teachers is broken," said Matthew Springer, executive director of the Vanderbilt center and lead researcher on the study. "But we don't know what the better way is yet."

Yes, there must be a better way. We aren’t sure how to do it, but in the end, we’ll find a way to wreck the teaching profession. You can depend on us!

Who are these disappointed people? Why they’re at the Vanderbilt University's National Center on Performance Incentives. Sounds like a group dedicated to proving a point already decided on, doesn’t it?

Next up are studies at the Center on the effectiveness of flogging and blackmail on teacher performance.

Okay, I made that up.

You will see at the link that the Vanderbilt Center is a loyal retainer of Arne’s Duncan’s US Department of Education. Since gutting the teaching profession is a principal goal of the Department of Education, it was of course disappointed in the study, too:

The U.S. Education Department called the study too narrowly focused.

I’d be curious to know how the Vanderbilt Center could have screwed this up so badly. I mean, it gets all of its money from the Department of Education. Arne must really be annoyed.