Ivy Leaguers run it

This headline in the current issue of Forbes says a lot about the current state of American democracy: "Ivy Leaders: Members of America's ruling class get their start at eight elite schools."

'More than just performance pay...'

The current issue of Edweek has another planted "research" piece, this time promoting billionaire businessman Lowell Milken's latest performance-pay model being pawned off on schools and teachers. According to Forbes, Lowell avoided fraud charges when his brother Michael Milken, the "junk-bond king," pled guilty to securities fraud in 1990.

This one is called TAP or Teacher Advancement Program, and if you read Stephen Sawchuck's, "TAP: More Than Performance Pay," you will learn that TAP is the new panacea. It's kind of the Democrats' version of Reading First.

According to Sawchuck, TAP does everything from aligning systems for managing schools’ "human capital" (that what they call teachers nowadays) to shaping "new approaches to on-the-job training, career advancement, and evaluation in ways that yield insights about how such features can be arranged so teachers embrace them."

Trying to keep from laughing out loud halfway down the article, since I've been in schools using TAP, I already knew what I would find at the bottom of the page-- a note saying that this article was sponsored by the Joyce Foundation. As you might have guessed, TAP is also one of the Joyce Foundation's funded projects.

Of course Edweek is only underming its own credibility by running sponsored program evaluation pieces underwritten by the very agency sponsoring the program.