Few professions reward workers merely for showing up.
Many public schools do, though.
This helps no one, certainly not teachers who show initiative and excellence. Certainly not students held hostage by mediocre instructors. For too long, the emphasis in schools has been on the efforts poured into them, rather than on what comes out. Unfortunately, the nation's largest teachers union still doesn't get it. At its annual conference this week in Chicago, a majority of the National Education Association's 9,000 delegates rebelled against their own leadership by rejecting proposals to link teacher pay with student performance.