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| Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons |
The Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), the state’s largest educators union, has agreed to tie teacher evaluations, promotions and terminations to student scores on the MCAS standardized state exam. MTA officials said that the change was inevitable, so it was better to get on board early and help shape the plan. “We have to be the architects of reform, rather than the subject of it,” said Paul Toner, MTA president. Paul Reville, the state’s Secretary of Education, praised the union. (Big surprise)
MTA is correct that there is growing momentum for performance pay based on student test scores; at least it would seem so from the screeds of politicians and pundits. It has been called for by Obama and his privatization-hungry ed chief, Arne Duncan. It has been promoted by Bill Gates, Eli Broad and other billionaires out to destroy public education. But they are dead wrong that it is inevitable or that unions must jump on board idiotic projects that will be detrimental to children and to teachers.
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| Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons |
Value-Added systems, in which teacher pay is tied to student test scores, have been shown to be complete bunkum. The consequences will be that many good teachers get punished and will ultimately leave the state or the profession. This will only harm schools and the children they serve. Standardized test scores are linked most closely with children’s economic background, not their teachers’ quality.
Teachers everywhere should be very concerned when union leaders collaborate with the enemy like this. It is nothing short of a sellout. Rather than wasting members’ dues on salaries for lazy chicken shit union bureaucrats and on unreliable politicians, unions need to get back to their original job: organizing, agitating and mobilizing their members.
