Guelph Mercury Community Editorial Board member Greg Cawsey likely purchased a few day-job conversations with his most recent submission to the paper.

His column this month asserted that we could likely improve the quality of our public education system if we improved the quality of the teaching. For Cawsey, a public sector teacher, to go down this road, was potentially hot terrain indeed.

What Cawsey mused about, however, shouldn't be taboo in his field or elsewhere. No doubt his fair comment that there are teachers within the ranks who are making a substandard effort -- but are unlikely to be weeded out or even obliged to improve would have rankled many education system stakeholders. But these players -- teachers' union honchos, those with the College of Teachers, education system mandarins, school board officials and others might have cringed at such talk. But Cawsey is right.

All public system teachers, heck anyone who has been a public system student, knows there are great educators and ones who offer much less value for the money. Further, they know the track record of effectively evaluating teachers and improving their performance is spotty at best.

Cawsey made mention of the difficult spot that school administrators are in to do teacher evaluations and how teachers unions have resisted making the process more vigorous.

He also suggested that adding the carrot of merit pay for effective teachers could be a strategy worth exploring.

These aren't radical notions. But they are political hot potatoes.

As a result there isn't enough attention paid to this type of potential educational reform. That's a shame.

Much is made of the payment and benefits teachers receive. They are adequate to recruit talented candidates to the field and to retain them. This is an area where we should want talent and be open to paying equitably for it. But it's also a workforce that should be evaluated, upgraded whenever possible and more effectively and accountably performance-managed.