If you do well in your job, odds are you will be rewarded. That is fair.
If you do poorly in your job, chances are that you will be fired. That is fair.
However, if you are a teacher who does your job either very well or poorly, the National Education Association wants to make sure that you will see neither a reward or an unemployment line.
The nation’s largest teachers union on Tuesday urged U.S. senators to oppose an appropriations amendment that would grant money to educators who perform well, a stance that confused the amendment’s author, who was among the recipients of the letter.
“I am astonished,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said on the Senate floor Tuesday about a letter from the National Education Association urging him to vote against his own amendment to the FY2007 Continuing Resolution.
The Department of Education says on its website the TIF “supports efforts to develop and implement performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems in high-need schools” through student academic achievement and regular in-class evaluations of the teachers.
Alexander criticized the union for threatening to label senators “anti-education” for what he characterized “support[ing] a program to find a fair way to reward outstanding principals and teachers who are teaching low-income children and helping them succeed.”
“What they are against is helping find a fair way to pay good teachers more for teaching well, and to train and help good principals lead schools — especially in big cities where we have a lot of low-income children who are falling behind,” he said.
The NEA director of education policy and practice said the organization opposes TIF because its objectives are unpopular among teachers. The NEA believes the money could be better spent in other programs.
Yes, other programs like “Put the condom onthe banana” for 2nd graders or some new sideways math theory that doesn’t do anything but confuse the kids.
As Coach TC implied at KisP: Why does the NEA hate America’s children?