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. School choice and vouchers give students and their parents an important voice in determining whether schools are good by allowing them to decide which to attend.
Merit pay for teachers and principals provides another approach.
The basic problem with instituting these new approaches is that we have very little evidence about what works and what doesn't. While Hartford is taking the lead in outside contracting, there is little evidence to suggest how best to structure such contracts. As for vouchers, there is some information about a program that has been running in Milwaukee for four years, but considerable uncertainty remains about how to apply the Milwaukee model elsewhere. The same holds with other performance-incentive schemes. This lead to our panel's final recommendation.