Jon comments:
Unions are perceived as an obstacle and not a partner to school reform. If they made concessions on merit pay, even on a trial basis, it would go a long way in terms of reducing skepticism of their self-interests.
They did! It just happened that John Kerry, who want to pursue merit pay, wasn't elected to the presidency. George W. Bush, who wanted to privatize Social Security, was. But that's not the teacher's union's fault. They, after all, tried very hard to get the guy proposing merit pay elected.
Even so, merit pay has been introduced, with union support, in Minneapolis, DC, Houston, and many other localities. It's simply no longer the case that teacher's unions are monolithically standing in the way of merit pay. And while I'm pretty firmly in favor of such policies, it's also not the case that merit pay has sparked a miracle revitalization in any school districts. It's a good policy, but part and parcel of this weird overvaluing of programs that are seen as diminishing the strength of teacher's unions.
