Dan Romero

As NaNoWriMo kicks off today, I too will be working on a "novel" this month. It's a twenty page term paper for my political science class on U.S. economic foreign policy. The topic? The U.S. sanctions against Iran and how European countries have responded to such policies.

Now don't flood my inbox with requests to see a rough draft. I know how fascinating it sounds! But seriously, this topic will hopefully be worthwhile, especially since Iran seems to be the 2008 race's foreign policy focus at the moment.

Anyways, I will be blogging about my experience and any interesting readings I find on the web will find there way on to here or the linklog.

Seth Godin's recent post on the Wikipedia gap was quite interesting. And it got me thinking.

In the real world, there are few, if any, times when a person has to do something completely from memory. If someone wants to know the date the Treaty of Versailles was signed, they will simply Google it, not try to recall it from the days of 10th grade Western Civ. I am not saying that learning how to commit things to memory is not important either.

I think Seth is right on when he says:

Here's what just about every exam ought to be: "Use Firefox to find the information you need to answer this question:" And as the internet gets smarter, the questions are going to have to get harder. Which is a good thing. Until teachers get unstuck, our kids are going to be stuck and so will we.

America's schools should be focused on empowering students to find information on the Web, not memorize soon forgotten facts from a history textbook. Function over form people.

The New York Times is reporting that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is planning a new merit pay program for New York City teachers. Bonuses will be dependent on student test scores and will be targeted for teachers working in low-income, high poverty schools.

While I definitely see such a move as a positive for teachers working in poorer schools, I worry that the program could lead to a step backward in students' education. When compensation is linked directly to higher test scores, teachers have more incentive modify curriculum based on testing requirements. While not always a bad thing, such teaching for a test can definitely inhibit students' intellectual curiosity and excitement to learn.

Futhermore, the system doesn't necessarily reward an excellent teacher, but rather, one who has had the good fortune (whether through great teaching or sheer luck) to have his or her class earn high scores.

This case reminds me of the classic store salesman model: commission vs. salary . The commission-based salesman has more incentive to sell you the highest priced product and protection plan, even if it is not the best one. The salaried salesman, who gains nothing from pushing the inferior high-priced product, is much more willing to share his own opinions, leading the customer to better value. I know it's not exactly the same, but I think there is a connection.

At the end of the day, I hope the program works out for best, even though it has me a little bit wary. At least Bloomberg is engaging the issue instead of avoiding it.