I have friends in the tony suburbs north of NYC. Their PSs are OUTSTANDING. They RAVE about their schools. There is no merit pay and the chief dissatisfaction is the amount of time spent on test prep... an innovation that was begun in the "lets collect mega-hunks of data" craze ushered in by NCLB.

OTOH, I work in the NYC schools. The system here is an immense disaster. No one has produuced any... ahem.... *data*... to establish or even to suggest that substandard teaching is to blame. Nor is there any reason to believe, logically, that this is true.

>>>>however, reforms must be made to the system because it is not working. >>>>

SOME systems, such as mine, are not working. Some are working quite well.
Reforms should be made to the systems that are NOT working in order improve them but I don't get the jump in logic to "merit pay". There is no reason I know of no reason to suspect that NYC teachers are going to be motivated to work *harder* if they get more money. And that this is going to translate into higher test scores. It's actually kind of amusing. What's wrong with this system has nothing to do with lack of monetary inducements to work harder.

Trust me.... things aren't bad in this school system 'cause we're all locked into a "pay scale."

>>>We can start with how public schools are financed.>>>>

Now yer talking. But it goes way beyond that. We have to figure out ways to lure the middle class back into the public schools. Educated people expect a lot from their kids schools and they tend to get it.