Will money solve our education problems?

Most Americans agree that there is something wrong with our public education system. It's hard not to--we often hear any number of bleak statistics about the alarming state of public education in the US (low high school graduation rates, enormous gaps between racial and socioeconomic groups, low performance compared to other countries, etc etc etc).

What we don't agree on is what to do about it! Let's skip the issues of charter schools or vouchers entirely and, for the moment, focus on public schools. Most people agree that it's a good thing for the government to spend more money on education, but the allocation of government funds can be controversial.

So what about... merit pay for teachers? ♥ Michelle Rhee ♥ , the chancellor of Washington DC public schools, is a big proponent of merit pay for teachers. This would involve bonuses (often quite large ones) for teachers whose classes perform better on the standardized tests currently used to measure academic progress. Possibly also bonuses for teaching in more needy or dangerous districts, or for teaching subjects that are more in demand of teachers (math or science), or for teaching special-education classes, or for having higher qualifications.

While there are some obvious benefits for merit pay, the fundamental question is: does throwing money at education really solve its problems? Will paying teachers more change anything at all? Perhaps it will motivate existing teachers to work harder, or perhaps it will encourage some bright people who otherwise would have gone on to more lucrative careers to be teachers instead. But it completely fails to address some of the structural concerns with public education (budget gaps, differing levels of parental investment or emphasis on learning at home), and it sends us even farther along the path of standardized testing for all (to determine which teachers are doing well, you'd have to test often and rely on those numbers as accurate measures of achievement).

In other words--is this a problem we can solve by throwing money at it?