Can someone tell me what the NEA position is on the RTTT grants?

[Orlandodem]

It better be against the portions that require merit pay. And the NEA needs to go to Obama and tell him that a major constituency of his, teachers, will be sitting home in 2010 and 2012 if he keeps up his education policies which are an extension of Bush's and the Republicans.

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. I can't. But I commend you for asking an excellent question. nt

[tonysam]

2. Here is your answer

Officials of the National Education Association issued a stinging criticism yesterday of the Obama administration's "narrow agenda" for the Race to the Top program and formally announced the union's opposition to key elements of the $4.35 billion initiative.

Among other areas, the NEA said it would not support the program's goals of encouraging states to use test scores for evaluating teachers, increasing the number of charter schools, and bolstering alternative routes to teacher licensure.

In a strongly worded letter, the union intimated that Education Secretary Arne Duncan was reneging on his promise to promote education reform by being "tighter" on goals, but giving states and districts more flexibility to achieve reforms.

"The administration's theory of success now seems to be tight on the goals and tight on the means," Kay Brilliant, the NEA's director of education policy and practice, wrote in the letter to Duncan that accompanied its formal comments on the proposals. "We find that top-down approach disturbing. We have been down that road before with the failures of No Child Left Behind, and we cannot support yet another layer of federal mandates that have little or no research base of success and that usurp state and local governments' responsibilities for public education."

More


Not that the administration or state legislators care; subverting teacher protections in order to receive the blackmail money is going on in earnest.

[zazen]

3. lots of non-teachers paid 100K plus sit around in rooms and plan RTTT proposals

I'd be hard pressed to think of another field where there are so many highly paid "experts" who somehow need to be paid even more to take even more dollars each year to come up with brand new "reforms" on an annual basis, all on behalf of the people who do all the work but whose opinions are rarely consulted. I've been in these meetings, and I try to get living, breathing classroom teachers in my grants planning meetings whenever I can. But usually they're nowhere to be found. They aren't invited, and in any case they're too busy trying to implement all of the other mandates that roomfuls of non-teachers have already dreamed up and not bothered to revisit when planning more inane initiatives.

[tonysam]

5. delete

[tonysam]

6. Exactly. I had misread your post in my zeal :0

School districts are FULL of these idiot consultants and the like. Washoe County School District paid something like $26,000 to get a "consultant" to try and get superintendents from around the country to apply for the superintendent job when it became open. The first round of superintendent finalists all bailed out! The district finally settled on another Eli Broad Academy flak, Heath Morrison.

[LWolf]

4. I'd like to see the NEA stand up with that message.

I thought it was wrong to endorse him in the first place. I understood the political necessity, but it spoke against what any of us who listened to him speak about education knew.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. AFT on merit pay:

In February 2001, the AFT executive council approved a landmark resolution, based on the work of its Task Force on Professional Compensation for Teachers, that calls for enhancing the traditional teacher compensation schedule. The resolution says that the AFT "believes it is time to explore viable, fair and educationally sound teacher compensation options that will raise salaries while contributing to efforts already under way to assure high-quality, well-prepared teachers for all students."

http://www.aft.org/topics/teacher-quality/compensation/index.htm