A teacher who produces exceptionally large gains in student performance generally sees little difference in compensation or career advancement. A superintendent whose schools spend less while keeping student achievement constant is unlikely to be rewarded. The second basic problem is that schools make almost no effort to evaluate the success or failure of programs. Our panel believes the answer lies in performance incentives, not more regulation or more spending. Performance incentives, on the other hand, specify what is to be achieved and leave it up to those who run the schools to figure out how.
Education is inherently a highly decentralized activity.
It is almost impossible to create a single set of regulations to identify, hire and mobilize America's almost three million teachers. If there is a single, glaring lesson to be learned from past attempts at school reform it is that no single overarching approach can solve the problems of every school. Policy makers should decentralize school systems and set performance standards. That said, schools have begun to experiment with a number of promising performance-incentive schemes. For instance, charter schools enable teachers to set up new, innovative institutions.