"I've been reading the NYC Parents Blog lately," said the Mayor. "It turns out that test scores don't actually determine who is and is not a good teacher, and that none of this stuff is proven. Not only that, but merit pay has been kicking around for a hundred years, and it's never produced any results whatsoever. In fact our merit pay trial in NYC didn't work either, and I don't even know what made me want to do it again. Maybe one of those recently graduated education advisers. Who knows?"
The Mayor went on to explain that he'd been getting most of his information from pro-"reform" sites, and was dismayed to learn that the commenters he'd relied upon for information were largely motivated by the prospect of gift cards for free footlongs from Subway.
"How the hell can you rely on people who write things only because they want free sandwiches?" mused the Mayor.
The new plan will save money by making merit pay totally arbitrary. A wheel will be installed at Tweed, which will then be spun to determine the schools in which merit pay will be distributed. Then, lucky merit pay winners' names will be pulled out of hats in their respective schools.
"It's as good a method as any," said Bloomberg, running to meet the SUV that drives him to his preferred subway station. As we waited for the room air-conditioner to be installed in the SUV window, the mayor confided, "We'll save a lot of money and time this way. No one really understands the data, it's completely unreliable, and I personally hate the little weasels who have the patience to plod through it anyway."
Asked why he didn't simply give teachers the raise all other city employees got for the 2008-2010 bargaining period, Bloomberg said the expense was prohibitive, and pointed to the 80-million the city wasted on ARIS, due to be scrapped for a state system very soon. The mayor intimated that the entire notion of merit pay was specifically designed to spare the city the expense of raises, and he hoped that other unions would embrace it so as to make it easier to provide tax cuts for speculators, investors, and his neighbor Cathie Black.
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