Neither history, nor logic, nor research will prevent unfair payment- by-results systems from being designed and implemented, Mr. Nelson says. And whenever such schemes are implemented, the most tragic victim of the timequake is authentic and meaningful improvement. The premise of Timequake One was that a timequake, a sudden glitch in the space-time continuum, made everyone and everything do exactly what they'd done during a past decade, for good or ill, a second time. It was deja vu that wouldn't quit for 10 long years. You couldn't complain about life being nothing but old stuff, or ask if just you were going nuts or if everybody was going nuts. There was absolutely nothing you could say during the rerun, if you hadn't said it the first time through the decade. You couldn't even save your own life or that of a loved one, if you failed to do that the first time through. . . . when people got back to when the timequake hit did they stop being robots of their pasts. As the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout said, Only when free will kicked in again could they stop running obstacle courses of their own construction. - Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake LIKE the world in Kurt Vonnegut's prescient 1997 novel, the world of education in the late 20th century seems to have been struck by a timequake in which we are all destined to repeat our lives on automatic pilot until the timequake is over and free will returns. The manifestation of this timequake is now evident to anyone who is paying attention to the many accountability initiatives around the country, including recent news from Denver, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia, where schemes for for teachers have been announced. But the less recent news tells us that the innovations of performance-based and related merit pay schemes (which may collectively be labeled by results) have a history dating back well over a century. The idea of tying monetary support to demonstrated results - an idea that should have expired long ago - lingers like a dormant fault line. With school districts in three major cities trying new payment-by-results schemes (with the cooperation of teacher unions), more educators than ever before may soon experience the destructive force of this frighteningly recurrent phenomenon. If you haven't heard the news yet, in September 1999 teachers in Minneapolis agreed to a contract that included a new pay formula. For the first time, the formula went beyond differentiated pay based on education and experience to include other measures. Though details are yet to be fully worked out, peer review, which began as a voluntary improvement initiative a decade ago and was made mandatory in 1997, will probably be one of the ways teachers' pay is differentiated.1 The Minneapolis teachers' contract comes close on the heels of similar news from Denver, where earlier in September 1999 the teacher union and the school board announced a two-year pilot program that will directly link teachers' salaries with student performance. In the Denver pilot program, about 15% of Denver's 4,300 teachers are to be involved in the new payment-by-results scheme.2 Most recently, word has come that performance pay is part of the new collective bargaining agreement with Philadelphia teachers. But what really is news here? After all, the idea of payment by results has a history in education that includes numerous schemes and dates back well over a hundred years. Perhaps the most dramatic new development with regard to payment by results is the response of some teachers and union representatives to this recycled reform. This response ranges from resignation and acquiescence to what sounds like approval. The president of the National Education Association was quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune as saying, I applaud these places for trying new approaches. They are to be commended for taking some risks and looking at things in a different way and doing things that are innovative. …