Public Education - Part 2

Read this article in the New York Times today. Many school districts are now offering bonus incentives to attract and retain good teachers, especially in the maths and sciences. Why is it so odd that this is happening? Education needs to be on par with the business world. You can't expect people to work so hard at such an important job for so little pay. It's about time teachers started getting rewarded for staying in tougher schools. They get paid less than their counterparts in wealthier suburban areas and they work five times as hard (if they are any good). Some districts are also paying additional bonuses if performance levels increase. Why is that an anomaly? People in the business world get performance-based bonuses all the time. I hope this is a trend that continues and that perhaps if enough scores and grades go up, governments will realize that this is a model that works and that schools need to be given the money to sustain these programs. It would be interesting for someone to begin a long-term study to determine if crime/incarceration/unemployment go down in the districts where the quality of the teachers improves.