Education reformers have been trying to make a chink in the hegemonistic monopoly of public education for a long time.  The most extreme examples are school choice, the voucher debate and the privatization of the public education system: all too extreme for the Powers to accept.  But the idea of incentives and rewards, a much less extreme kind of reform, is making inroads in the very Death Star of public education: NYC schools.

New York attracted the national spotlight when the city and the union agreed on a groundbreaking plan to reward teachers who improve student achievement in the neediest schools [...] The federal proposals reward individual teachers who improve their credentials and meet other guidelines. The New York program takes a schoolwide approach. Under it, needy schools that hit specified performance targets would receive $3,000 per union staff member. The school-based committee that distributes the money could do so equally or give disproportionate shares to teachers deemed to have made a greater contribution to schoolwide achievement.

This is a big step in the right direction because it uses the concept of incentive in a healthy way.  But public schools ought to be careful: they may grow to like the idea of competition, and if that happens, it’s all over.  For them.