I KNOW ONE WHEN I SEE ONE

The carefully detailed ranking of Chicagoland schools (Sun Times, Oct 30) was almost but not quite complete. The perennial puzzle to what-makes-a-good-school is always missing a piece. The gifted teacher...!

We're not the first generation that's tried desperately to figure out what makes schools good. National programs like No School Left Behind and local programs like magnet and charter schools do all they can. But what they usually don't do is keep the few indispensable gifted teachers by rewarding them outside the fixed union-contract box.

Sure, we can measure things like building budgets and equipment inventories and now the prima donna of all measurements: Achievement scores. However -- as with all fields and professions -- we can't exactly measure giftedness. To alter an old adage: "I can't define a gifted teacher, but I know one when I see one!"

So here's the secret piece to the puzzle you didn't report. Virtually every principal, every faculty member, every parent, even every union rep, and certainly every student knows a girted teacher when they see one. These special few not only teach subject matter well, they touch lives forever! You've had one or two and so have I. But we've got to keep them from leaving the system, because they're the flame that helps fire the whole system.

How? Just like we do in far less important fields such as sports and corporations -- bonuses. There has to be a new category in the city school budgets for bonuses for the gifted. Sure, we're a democracy, but while every person is equal in the law, not every teacher is equal in the classroom.