FYI, I don’t know where you are now, but I doubt that in our district any teacher thinks homework is bad for students. They pile it on here, starting in kindergarten.

This school had a No Excuses policy in everything. The education was classical. The teachers were demanding and, often, harsh (when you didn’t follow the rules or live up to school expectations). Every last child at that school learned there. Of course, learning disabled students eventually needed more than this parochial school could provide – but that was because this school operated on next to nothing. The teachers were paid horribly. Everything at the school was old. It was in St. Louis where the public schools all were air conditioned – the heat was atrocious – but we suffered on without air conditioning because the school couldn’t afford it. Our desks were from the 1940s. Our textbooks were from the late 1950s.

Our test scores were amazing. We learned the old-fashioned way. Teachers taught us basic skills and built on those skills systematically. Sometimes we learned some facts by rote – but not before we understood the logic behind those facts.

Now that I have seen inside public school education, it saddens me that all children aren’t give the same opportunity to learn as children at the school I went to were. That school demanded a lot. We even did a lot of homework in grade school. Project Follow Through proved that these methods work. The public schools ignored the facts, preferring fanciful, romantic ideas of education.

It is so sad. Our children are ignorant because of it.

So how do school systems get to the base pay level Rhee is proposing, because it looks like her plan relies partly on private funding, at least in the early years. Is it eliminating class-size reductions popular in many states, as Wilson says, the answer? How does this level of base pay become sustainable on a national level when the current national average is around $47,000?

As for the bonuses, I’m already on record as not being a fan of test-driven merit pay. I’m just not convinced that a September to June emphasis on bubble tests proves that students are learning. And how are such student gains sustainable in the long run. It seems that once a district reaches the point where all students scoring in the top category on standardized tests, there’s no where else to go. Granted, reaching that level would be more than a few years down the road. And I suppose the answer would be increasing the standards to NAEP levels.

I do love your tutoring program, though, and I’d love to see Secretary Duncan jump all over that one. I know many parents who would love to be able to help their children but simply don’t know how. I think even two years with a tutoring would benefit not only students, but moms and dads as well in the long run.

I’m an administrator at MATCH School. I’d like to add an observation.

I think we, like many No Excuses schools, do attract unusually gifted teachers. But I think it’s a case of “enlarging the talent pool.”

Many of the people we attract simply do not want to be lifetime teachers. This is true of many talented folks from many sectors: they do not want any one career.

Instead, we welcome talented people who basically say “I’ll give the kids everything I have for perhaps 5 years. Then I’m gone. It’s not burnout. It’s that I simply don’t want to teach 9th grade algebra my whole life. Is that of interest to your school?”

No Excuses schools say yes (in a million different ways). Traditional schools say “Whatever.”

We lost 2 teachers last year. They went in your direction – one to Stanford MBA, one to Berkeley Law. I’m don’t think they were burned out. I bet they work just as many hours, if not more, in their next jobs.

But if we want to attract more of these folks, we need compensation like what DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee proposes: 60k to 70k base, and up to 60k in bonus based on student gains from September to June.