Sunday, March 04, 2007

Bush Wants “No CEO Left Behind” Reauthorized

America’s obsession with rewarding performance continues in both corporate board rooms and public school systems. In both cases an impartial measure is selected with funds going to people who improve on those core statistics.

Corporate America selected a company’s stock price as the measure, granting stock options to executives as an incentive to improve performance. Its twelve year history reveals widespread cheating to maximize already generous compensation packages. Some 30% or nearly 2,000 publicly traded companies cheated by backdating those option grants to the date of the lowest stock price of the grant period.

In education President Bush believes “you need to measure and I know you need to set high standards.” Test results are education’s equivalent of stock prices. Schools that show improvement in scores get a bonus. Those that underperform receive “consequences”.

How long will it take for 30% of teachers to lie, cheat or steal like their CEO counterpart?

No comments: