Mike Huckabee in A Simple Government, by Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R, AR)

On Education: Establish merit pay and abolish tenure

School should adopt merit programs, which would make the teaching profession more competitive and thus attract better candidates. Some say that merit pay wouldn't be fair, that some teachers would get more simply because the principal likes them. But isn't that how life works in the private sector? Don't some people get promoted because their boss thinks they do a good job? Merit pay at every school in the country would create a system superior overall to what we have now. We hear all this agonizing about the criteria for merit pay, about the difficulty of deciding who deserves more. The truth is that principals know who their best teachers are. Teachers themselves know who the best teachers in their school are, as do the children and their parents.