The Chicago Tribune’s John Keilman reports that the Chicago northern suburb of Evanston has started a system of merit pay for teachers. For the first time ever in any Illinois school district, teachers will be evaluated by the individual test scores of their students. This judgment will then combine with more qualitative evaluations (like a principal monitoring a teacher in the classroom) to evaluate teachers as “excellent,” “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.”

As I’ve reported on, state education departments and local school districts across the country feel a ton of pressure to introduce some form of teacher merit pay so they can qualify for billions of dollars in federal Dept. of Education grants. Barack Obama and Education Sec. Arne Duncan speak constantly of teacher accountability and see student test-based performance pay as the main way to hold teachers accountable. However, most local school districts are skeptical. Keilman reports that the most sweeping merit pay plan was done in Washington, D.C. — where the U.S. Congress utilized its power over the district to install the new teacher evaluation system.

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