I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Here It Comes...

And the new Season of Stupid begins... NOW!
TRENTON — The state’s top education official today will unveil sweeping legislation that would change the way teachers in New Jersey are evaluated, compensated, and given tenure, said a person familiar with the proposal.
Although details of the proposed legislation were not immediately available, the source indicated it would follow some of the changes Gov. Chris Christie has called for: the linking of teacher evaluations to student performance, eliminating teacher tenure and replacing it with five-year contracts, and offering bonuses to the state’s most talented teachers.
The source said the proposal to be disclosed today would constitute one of the most ambitious efforts by any state to improve the quality of teaching. The source requested anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak about it publicly.
Department of Education officials would not provide specifics of the speech.
10-to-1 the "source" isn't a teacher; remember, we just have to bend over and take this without any say in the policy.

We know VAM and merit pay is a disaster:
Along with tenure reform, the proposed legislation will also focus on merit pay, something the governor often describes as reward for the state’s best teachers, according to the source. But Rutgers University Graduate School of Education professor Bruce Baker said merit pay would make teaching a less desirable profession for new-comers.
"Teachers will realize very quickly that they have little control over these raises and how prone to error the calculations are," Baker said. "The merit of these types of raises isn’t merit at all — it’s a crap shoot."
But I guess we'll have to have a huge wave of lawsuits to demonstrate that.

As we head into this, remember one thing: they do not care about research, facts, or logic. They have a plan and they want to push it through, no matter how ill-conceived or detrimental to students it may be.

We've seen this all before...

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