I'm not against paying teachers in poor districts more (provided you can find a way to pay for it), I'm against paying teachers in wealthy districts less - it's already a challenge to live and work in those areas on a teacher's salary.

As to firing teachers that consistently show they can't produce results, sure. That already happens the vast majority of the time. Fundamentally, though, you are operating under the assumption that motivation is the problem - that we need more consequences, and more rewards to make teachers try harder.

Here's the thing: a 10% bonus on 30k isn't going to make the difference between success and failure for a teacher who is already putting in 70 hours a week. You can't get that kind of effort out of people for that kind of money. And, a teacher who is content to do a mediocre job at 40 hours a week isn't going to kick it up to 70 (it really does take that much time) in order to get a small pay bump.

Our problem isn't financial incentives or a lack of consequences for poor scores. Our problem is crappy teacher training, flavor-of-the-month curriculum choices and instructional methods that are entirely unproven, and consistent "brain-drain" where people who have better options (the good ones) leave the field after a few years at most. What you're suggesting is a band-aid to cover up a bruise, where we need surgical intervention to fix deeply broken structure.

Maybe things are different where you live, but in my state you can choose any public school in your area to enroll your student in - the only caveat being you have to figure out a way to get them there. If you want a charter school, everyone there is equally subject to the same limitations, whether it is open enrollment, lottery, waiting list, or whatever. I fail to see the problem.

My wife and I are both ex-teachers, and we intend to homeschool. Many of the teachers do the best they can, but the truth is the U.S. is increasingly anti-intellectual and teachers are forced to spend more and more of their time focusing their attention on the bottom 10% of students. Very little of the time in a school day is spent on intellectual development, and as for social interaction, public school is among the least constructive social environments you'll find.

I don't get this whole voucher thing, because currently, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING preventing you from putting your child in whatever school you damn well please. Schools can and do compete and try to get more students, because more students = more funding. Vouchers are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Your ideas have decent motivation, but they miss on a number of points:

Tying teacher pay to free-and-reduced kids - sounds great, but the places with lots of poor kids are generally impoverished places with low real estate values, etc - basically a low cost of living. It is cheaper to maintain buildings there, cheaper for staff to live there, etc. The inverse is also true - high-income areas have a high cost of living. On some level you DO need to account for cost of living in staff salaries and school funding. Currently this can get our of control, property-tax school funding means that poor areas get little funding and rich areas get a lot... we need some of that, but we could probably benefit from a more balanced funding structure that made the difference less extreme.

Tying pay to year-over-year improvement: it would be better than measuring against a fixed standard, but the problem I have there is: teachers are not car salesmen. There's a fair amount of research that indicates pay is a poor motivator for creative or intellectual tasks. The suggestion that incentive pay is the answer seems misguided... after all, it's no secret that teachers aren't paid well, so they are a group of people who have already decided to forgo money to take a low-paying but presumably fulfilling career. Why then would we think that the fundamental problem with education is that we don't have incentive pay?

The real problem is that our teachers aren't well trained, our methods aren't based on real research, and the pay as it exists mean that many teachers have far better options elsewhere. It isn't that they need annual bonuses for motivation - it's that a 2x pay differential eventually draws many people away.
 
Finland has had tremendous success with this basic approach - create rigorous teaching programs (the current ones just measure your capacity for BS and busywork), and pay the people who complete these rigorous programs a competitive base salary. This doesn't have to cost much more, because if you do it right (like Finland) you need fewer contact hours as well so you need fewer teachers. You also need patience, though... you can't reform an institution as lumbering and disjointed as U.S. education in a year, or presidential term, or maybe even two. It has taken us decades to get into this mess, it will take decades to get out of it. Which is why nothing will ever get fixed, because the public prefers fad policies that overpromise and underdeliver.

Your freedom only extends as far as yourself - when you begin to endanger other people, then society intervenes. Nobody is forcing people to vaccinate their kids - they are just saying you have to meet a minimum level of safety in order to bring them into close and continuing contact with large numbers of other children. Kids aren't allowed to bring weapons to school for the same reason. If you want to keep your kid armed all the time (via infectious disease or any other means) you are welcome to, it just means you'll have to handle education yourself.

This is an interesting contention. My perception is that some of those great undertakings DID work, and some didn't, but people have become cynical because we've got an incredible amount of technology and yet all of the historical human problems are still with us (poverty, starvation, death from simple diseases, violence, crime).

So perhaps it is the case that we've grown to distrust intellectuals because they overpromised. Or perhaps we've come to realize that technology is only part (and perhaps the easiest part) of addressing human suffering - these things are political and social problems which don't exist because of a lack of material resources, but because of dysfunctional structuring of society. Of course, you could say that Marxism, etc were attempting to address that specifically and were also shown to fail. I think the root of the problem is this: we've seen the "intellectual apparatus" perform virtual miracles of technological development, but there's also a distrust there because truly understanding how these achievements have been realized can require the better part of a lifetime. The language of technology is incomprehensible to those who haven't devoted themselves to it. However, I don't think we've actually ever attempted to put these intellectuals at the helm of the society, because of this distrust. It isn't honest to say that they've failed at reforming society because politics (at least in the US) has always been the sphere of those with charisma and/or extensive networks among the powerful - which has very little overlap with the technologically-minded population.

So, the situation is this: intellectuals are celebrated for their ability to create technological marvels, but we aren't comfortable trusting them with the keys to the castle. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe not. I for one always wonder if a government of scientists and engineers would be able to enact similar improvements in our social structures that we've seen in our technological landscape.

Have you read much steampunk? The seminal work (The Difference Engine) describes a society where intellectualism is celebrated almost above all, to the point that it is the primary driver of fashion. People cut their hair to make their heads look larger, wear spectacles, etc, etc.

Steampunk is driven by nerds, and while it is a somewhat fractious community, to say it is anti-intellectual shows that you have a deep misunderstanding of what it's about. If anything, it is motivated by a desire to return to a time when technological solutions were seen as the path to progress and the solution to all problems. Contrast to the real situation today: anybody who is paying attention can see that our technology is sufficient to end the vast majority of human suffering, but social/political/personal failings prevent most of these solutions from being realized.

I appreciate what you're trying to say, but every battle is NOT winnable. A big part of success is understanding the system you operate in, seeing where there are needs and opportunities and expending your effort in the right direction. Sure, determination is still one of the biggest assets a person can have, but all the determination in the world has still not been enough for all the perpetual motion yahoos out there to build a functioning machine.

There is a minimum threshold of intelligence and discretion below which determination will do little for you because you are constantly working on the wrong problems.

What do you really want out of life? There is nothing more enduring than fundamental contributions to human knowledge. Newton's laws will be remembered at least as long as this civilization lasts, but who was the king of England while he was developing the Principia? Few people know or care, outside of historians.

So, if you want to make a lasting contribution to humanity, devoting your life to knowledge is the best hope you have. That said, I'm not convinced that making a lasting contribution to humanity inherently makes your life more meaningful or worthwhile... lots of people have done so and still managed to be miserable.

The meaning of life is something we must define for ourselves... the fact that you seem unsatisfied suggests that you are pursuing things that aren't very meaningful to you. Resources clearly aren't a problem, so why not give them up and start working in physics? I for one would rather spend my whole life being moderately gifted at something I love than being tremendously successful at something I don't care for.

Viktor Frankl's writings might be very useful to you - Man's Search for Meaning in particular.

Why? Nobody is going to attend this school except by choice - if a parent wants to put their child in a single-sex STEM school, why shouldn't they be able to?

Again, why? Assuming the boys go there by choice, and that the school is legitimately trying to offer excellence in those areas, I see no problem in offering a specialized school, whether it is gender-specialized, subject-specialized, or both (in these examples). If you have a student who is highly interested in writing, literature, foreign languages, etc, I could imagine a very successful school with that focus.

I've seen the same in robotics clubs I've sponsored, but I think this sort of STEM school is actually a great way to try to remedy the issue. There are a number of studies that have shown girls do better at STEM in single-sex classrooms. Whether this is because they stop trying to impress boys, or feel more confident to speak up in class, or whatever it might be, it does seem to be a consistent observation, and something we could use to improve learning.

Having more choice is good, I think - nobody is being forced to go to this school, and if it works really well for some girls, what's the problem?

As far as I'm aware "non-profit" means nothing at all about charity. It means that the organization doesn't tuck money away in an account somewhere. The executives of a non-profit can and do make tons of money, use private jets, etc - as an example, the NFL of all things is a non-profit entity.

The simple numbers aren't too bad either - 1.7 million spread among 80 workers gives you about $20k a piece, so this is clearly cheaper than a job-creation initiative where you simply pay salaries directly. On top of that, this being NY, those are probably decently high salaries, so once you account for the extra taxes brought in, you probably aren't too far off from break-even. Especially after you give the program some more time to work.

Sounds like an attempt to smear a program that is actually working decently.

Ok, I'll bite - I don't care for Hillary because she's done nothing particularly admirable that I know of. Compare Elizabeth Warren - I like her ideals, I like the bills she's proposed, I believe she means what she says.

Certainly some people dislike her solely on the basis of being female, but surely that is a tiny, tiny minority. These preemptive accusations of sexism really don't improve the discussion.