Bill Gates, who appears to be running for shadow education secretary, just urged states and school districts to pay teachers according to “value-added based” merit systems that inevitably use standardized test scores to judge how well a teacher is doing, despite criticisms that there is no evidence such systems work.

Experience in teaching doesn’t matter much, nor do advanced education degrees, Gates said in a speech to the Council of Chief State School Officers’ annual policy forum in Louisville on Friday. Go to the original…