Obama backing merit pay for teachers

[Article 15]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama embraced merit pay for teachers Tuesday in spelling out a vision of education that will almost certainly alienate union backers.

A strategy that ties teacher pay to student performance has for years been anathema to teachers' unions, a powerful force in the Democratic Party. These unions also are wary of charter schools, nontraditional educational systems that they believe compete with traditional schools for tax dollars.

Obama, however, also spoke favorably of charter schools, saying that where they work, they should be encouraged.

Continued

 

[Xenophon]

Too many generalities.

It's open to interpretation what 'excellence' will entail, sounds like it will be a boondoggle.

 

[Skull Pilot]

he wouldn't want to lose his NEA endorsement after all.

i think we'll find that excellence will mean what the union says it means

 

[PoliticalChic]

he wouldn't want to lose his NEA endorsement after all.

i think we'll find that excellence will mean what the union says it means

"American schoolchildren perform worse on education tests for every year they spend in a public school. In fourth grade, the earliest grade for which international comparisons are available, American students outperform most other countries in reading, math and science. Fourth-graders score in the 92nd percentile in science, the 58th percentile in math and the 70th percentile in reading, where they beat 26 of 35 countries, including Germany, France and Italy. But by the eighth grade, American students are only midrange in international comparisons.

By the 12th grade -- after receiving the full benefits of an American education -- Americans are near the bottom. With an additional eight years of a public school education under their belts, Americans fall from the 92nd percentile in science to the 29th percentile. While American fourth-graders are bested only by South Korea and Japan in science, by 12th grade, the only countries the American students can beat are Lithuania, Cyprus and South Africa." Ann Coulter

Let's be optimistic and hope that President Obama sees performance on accepted tests as the way of giving merit pay. I would applaud that.

 

[jillian]

Too many generalities.

It's open to interpretation what 'excellence' will entail, sounds like it will be a boondoggle.

You think so? I'd think "merit" would mean a combination of student test scores and evaluations.

Would be a lot easier for him to leave things as they are, no?