Grading the Teachers Schools have a lot to learn from business about how to improve performance, say Bill and Melinda Gates

America’s schoolteachers are some of the most brilliant, driven and highly skilled people working today–exactly the kind of people we want shaping young minds. But they are stuck in a system that doesn’t treat them like professionals.

In most workplaces, there is an implicit bargain: Employees get the support they need to excel at their jobs, and employers build a system to evaluate their performance. The evaluations yield information that employees use to improve–and that employers use to hold employees accountable for results.

At Microsoft, we believed in giving our employees the best chance to succeed, and then we insisted on success. We measured excellence, rewarded those who achieved it and were candid with those who did not. Teachers don’t work in anything like this kind of environment, and they want a new bargain.

By Bill and Melinda Gates

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