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Show Views&Opinion Wednesday, April I, 2009 Gates: Another approach [•continued from page 11 fact, Gates said, evidence shows no connection between teaching quality and most of the measures used in contracts to . determine pay. Seniority, holding a master's degree or teacher's certification, and even, below 10th grade, having deep knowledge of a subject - these all are mostly irrelevant, It follows that some of the money devoted to rewarding teachers who get higher degrees and to pensions accessible only to those who stay 10 or more years should go instead to keeping the best teachers from Teaving in their fourth or fifth years. One purpose of measurement would be to deploy the best teachers to the neediest schools, and pay them accordingly; another, to fire the worst teachers. But the main point, Gates said, is that effective teaching can be taught: "The biggest part is taking the people who want to be good - and helping them." President Obama and his education secretary, former Chicago school superintendent Arne Duncan, are on the same wavelength. During an electronictown hall forum at the White House on Thursday, Obama cited as his priorities pre-K education, charter schools and teacher effectiveness. Obama and Duncan both stress that teachers shouldn't be judged on standardized tests alone, but they want better standardized tests to measure how much a student improves in a year, so that teachers can be rewarded or held accountable. Like Gates - with whom Obama had discussed teacher effectiveness the day before his town hall meeting - they want more emphasis on helping teachers who want to improve. But they also believe that ineffective teachers shouldn't be retained automatically, as is usually the case now. "And it can't be impossible to move out bad teachers, because that brings - that makes everybody depressed in a school," Obama said, " ... and it makes it harder for the teachers who are inheriting these kids the next year...." As it happens, these are the principles that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is seeking to bring to Washington schools. Like Obama, she says that she wants to work with, not against, teachers. But so far their union has done everything it can to block her, including preventing District of Columbia teachers from voting on her proposals. The union, among other differences, wants performance judged school-wide, not - as most reformers would say - on a mixture of school and individual teacher performance. Union locals, controlled by long-serving teachers, also, not surprisingly, tend to favor pay and pension structures that reward long-serving teachers, not thebest strategy to attract the brightest from a generation that doesn't envision spending 20 or 30 years with one employer, During a visit to The Post at the beginning of this month, Duncan, without commenting directly on the D.C. contract talks, endorsed Rhee's approach, "We have to reward excellence," Duncan said, "Reward, incent, spotlight excellence - which is what she's trying to do. We also have to make it easier to get rid of teachers when learning isn't happening, "The pendulum in the country has swung too far to adults," Duncan added, "She's trying to swing the pendulum back." Maybe the winds blowing from the White House will help Rhee push the pendulum toward an emphasis on children first. This editorial was written for The Washington Post by Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor. Page 13 Hush-up: Medical journal's problematic rule on complaint disclosures 'he editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) surely appreciated that Jonathan Leo, a professor at Lincoln Memorial University, made them aware of an undisclosed conflict involving a pharmaceutical company and the author of a study published in the journal. The JAMA editors did not, however, appreciate that Mr. Leo sent a copy of an e-mail to them to a reporter at The New York Times. Nor did they like his airing of his allegation in an article on the Web site of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) - almost five months after Mr. Leo sent his initial inquiry to JAMA. As a result, the esteemed medical journal has instituted a new set of complaint compliance rules that leave us wondering whether it cares more about its reputation than the integrity of its articles. The controversy surrounds a May 2008 study on the effects of an antidepressant drug on stroke patients by Robert Robinson and colleagues. JAMA requires disclosure of any financial relationships and other potential conflicts of interest by its authors. But Mr. Ts Leo discovered that Mr. Robinson failed to disclose that he was on the speakers bureau of the company that made the drug that was the subject of his study. On March 5, six days before the journal was to publish the details of its investigation into Mr. Robinson's incomplete disclosure, Mr. Leo went public with his piece for BMJ. The new rules from JAMA, announced in its March 20 edition, discourage such third-party disclosure from happening again. "The person bringing the allegation will be specifically informed that he/she should not reveal this information to third parties or the media while the investigation is under way," the editors wrote. Cathy DeAngelis, editor of JAMA, told us that the journal "can do nothing if the 'accuser' goes public, and we do not intend to try." But her insistence that concern for "(p)rotecting the accused person and thereby assuring due process" while the journal conducts its review misses the larger point of Mr. Leo's going public. This is a matter of transparency: If the information in scientific journals and studies is not free of conflicts, its value is diminished and its authors and the publications become suspect. JAMA's commitment to keep those who bring allegations informed of the investigation's progress and its completion helps with transparency. So does its commitment to immediately put its findings on the Web, instead of waiting until the magazine's next publication date. Muzzling whistleblowers might help JAMA control its image - but it's a disservice to the public. This editorial was published in Tuesday's Washington Post. 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