Rigor and Reward

Heads Up: Since it's South Park, there are two instances of naughty language, so if you're watching this on the House floor, or at a daycare, turn the volume down.


Yesterday, President Obama made an announcement regarding education and his vision for it in America.

It sounds great. And here's the kicker, he's right about nearly everything.

Here's where he's right: We need to make sure our students aren't falling behind, as compared to international standards. We need to get better about accountability and not let grades slip any more. We need to tighten the bolts on students, make the material more rigorous, and push them to succeed. And we need to pay teachers more.

Then Obama offered this notion: To pay teachers according to how well their students perform.

On the front end, you're thinking "Hey, that's pretty good! If a teacher is doing well, they should be paid well. If the teacher is encouraging and molding these young minds to get good grades, they ought to be rewarded. PLUS! It provides an incentive for the teacher to work harder to get their students to achieve more. Golly!"

Hopefully the documentary I provided might have enlightened some to question how this method of rigor and reward might play out.

Luckily for the journalist, suspect grade inflation was discussed at length in the Natural State as recently as last week.

My best good buddy in the whole wide world, columnogger Johnnie "JRay" Brummett, showed an apparent gaffe in the new-fangled state lottery requisites. He showed a list of "grade-inflaters" — schools that were easier to attain better grades. That's not me saying that 64.5 percent of kids in the Earle School district have bogus grades: That'd be the state Education Department.

If we're awarding teachers based on the performance of their students, the teachers in Earle would be sittin' pretty while the faculty of the Glen Rose School district in Hot Springs County, which has 65 students with a B average or higher and zero students with inflated grades would still be underpaid.

And what's to stop some That doesn't add up to me, either.

I get and applaud what the President is trying to do here. We must reach these kids and providing teachers adequate compensation is a wonderful start. But at the end of the day, Mr. Cartmenez's aforementioned question still remains: How do we reach these kids?

President Obama has yet to respond. Hopefully he will, if he's as serious and sincere about education reform as we should all hope he is.