Ed News
Scholastic is launching a new Harry Potter Reading Club for the start of the school year. There will be a live webcast with J.K. Rowling and she will answer questions from kids. Teachers can sign up now (it's on October 11 at 9 am our time). As well there are welcome kits to the first 10,000 registrants (but you can download it as well). Hilariousness with an sober side. It seems that there is this new idea for merit pay for teachers called "loss aversion." Economist Roland Fryer has been trying for years to find the magic incentive that would produce higher scores. He tried merit pay, and that didn’t work. He tried paying students to get higher scores, but that didn’t work. Now, he has at last found the key: He and his colleagues have perfected a technique called “loss aversion.” They give teachers a bonus (say, $4,000) at the beginning of the year. If the scores go up, the teachers keep the money. If the scores don’t go up, they lose the...