There would no longer be a step system for teachers, just a bullshit system of "merit" based primarily on test scores:
Thrasher himself calls the bill “the hammer,” which he says is necessary to force the Florida teachers union to end its opposition to merit pay for teachers.
His bill includes a demand that end-of course assessments be developed or acquired in all subjects not measured by state assessments or other tests such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate. But it doesn’t provide any money to accomplish the task--even if there was research suggesting these kinds of tests would be useful evaluation measures, which there isn’t.
There’s a lot of other awful components to the bill: Newly hired teachers would be on probation for five years and then work on annual contracts for the rest of their careers, for example.
The reason this is so dangerous is because standardized test scores, as has been said previously on this blog, are in no way a fair representation of how well a teacher has done his or her job--or for that matter how much a student has really learned.
Standardized tests used today in schools are nowhere near sophisticated enough -- if indeed any single test can be -- to serve as an important measure of performance.
Arne and Obama are fully to blame for a disaster like this being proposed.
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