Teachers should be paid based on "peer benchmarking," not performance. What do you think? We want only the best...

Republicans are big on teacher performance pay. It isn’t an effective incentive for the kind of profession it’s being applied too, but what the heck, how else can you discipline bad teachers. And most of them are bad, or, they’re in it for the money and union benefits.

But I’ve got a better idea, one that Wall Street and free market Republicans have endorsed; peer benchmarking. The Republican congress had a fit when Wall Street compensation and bonuses became an issue because limiting either would discourage the best from staying in their jobs.

What is “peer benchmarking?” I’ll let thisHuffington Post article explain:

The American economy may be faltering, but corporate executives needn't worry: Regardless of how well they perform, each one of them stands a good chance of getting paid as much as all the others -- if not more. That's because of a practice known as "peer benchmarking" -- a widely used method wherein corporations set pay for their executives at or above the median level of, well, other executives. No company wants their top brass leaving for another job with better pay, so executives are often compensated not based on how well they do, but on how much their competitors in the industry make.

See how well it works? If we want the best teachers, let’s go to “peer benchmarking” and do away with that silly carrot and stick approach. It’s worked on Wall Street say the CEO’s and Republican politicians.

The result? Salaries at the top are inching higher all the time. The financial crisis and subsequent worldwide economic slowdown haven't stopped executives from taking home bigger paychecks … In general, executive salaries have grown far faster than the incomes of average workers in the years since the crisis. Median CEO compensation pay rose by 27 percent in 2010, compared with an increase of just 2.1 percent for workers. Such figures suggest that the prevalence of peer benchmarking, as outlined in a recent Washington Post article, may play an important role in the United States' ever-widening wealth gap. (The) middle- and lower-class incomes became more or less stagnant. A recent study shows that countries with a more equitable income distribution tend to have longer periods of economic growth -- and that "more inequality lowers growth."