Two recent examples.

1. I was invited to attend the Progressive Policy Institute on Wednesday, but not as a speaker. The topic is introduced by saying

Now that Congress has passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states are revamping their federally required systems to measure school quality and hold schools accountable for performance. But most are doing so using outdated assumptions, holdovers from the Industrial Era, when cookie-cutter public schools followed orders from central headquarters and students were assigned to the closest school.

In today’s world, that is no longer the norm. We are migrating toward systems made up of diverse, fairly autonomous schools of choice, some of them operated by independent organizations, as charter, contract, or innovation schools. Before revising their measurement and accountability systems, states need to rethink their assumptions.

2. And David Cutler must be happy to read this story.

Medicare on Friday unveiled a far-reaching overhaul of how it pays doctors and other clinicians. Compensation for medical professionals will start taking into account the quality of service – not just quantity.

A Nobel Prize in economics was just awarded in part for the insight that it is a bad idea to compensate workers on factors that are heavily influenced by luck. In my view, having someone in Washington evaluate a school or a teacher or a doctor does exactly that.

People who are close to the schooling process, including parents, peers, and principals, can use judgment to evaluate teachers. That’s the way it used to work 50 years ago, before the advent of consolidated, unionized school districts.

For doctors, the prevalence of third-party payments means that their compensation is being determined by remote bureaucrats regardless.