How Do We Make (and Pay) Better Teachers?

That’s the question this week’s TIME cover story asks, while doing a fabulous job covering the often-thorny subject of teacher pay and performance.

Providing balance on this issue is difficult for journalists because while most folks would love to see their best, most unforgettable teachers paid more than the average lot, our nation simply hasn’t devised a sure-fire method for measuring teacher performance—or a pay system that supports it.

Teachers are entitled to worry that their future pay might be based on a single day of testing within a whole year of teaching. And yet, how else to do we measure effective teaching and student learning? The author, Claudia Wallis, provides examples of several programs, including ProComp in Denver and the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), that may provide us with an answer. Denver’s ProComp experiment has certainly drawn support—in just one year, half of Denver’s 4,555 teachers signed on to the new performance pay model.

But the article truly hit the nail on the head with this statement:

“If the country wants to pay teachers like professionals—according to their performance, rather than like factory workers logging time on the job—it has to provide them with other professional opportunities, like the chance to grow in the job, learn from the best of their peers, show leadership and have a voice in decision-making, including how their work is judged. Making such changes would require a serious investment by school districts and their taxpayers. But it would reinvigorate a noble profession.”

Well said, and kudos to TIME for taking the time (ha, sorry!) to provide citizens and taxpayers with a thorough update on this important education debate.