Revolving Door Teachers

Baltimore has found a perfect way to keep the cost of teachers down, and that's by systematically rating veteran teachers as "unsatisfactory" in order to fire them or force them to retire and make room for the cheap bimbos such as those from Temp for America:

A significant number of Baltimore teachers — in some schools as many as 60 percent of the staff — have received unsatisfactory ratings on their midyear evaluations as the system moves to implement a pay-for-performance contract that's considered a bellwether for a national movement.

Teachers contend that the high number of "performance improvement plans," which can be a precursor for dismissal, is an attempt to avoid paying raises. But city school officials say that putting teachers on such plans is part of broader efforts to help them become more effective in the classroom.

Baltimore is one of a handful of districts at the forefront of a national debate on how to root out the worst teachers and reward the most effective. The city has joined a growing number of districts looking to implement new evaluation systems that link teacher ratings and pay to students' academic progress.

Of course pay for performance doesn't work in a profession that requires collaboration, not competition, among colleagues, However, if you don't see teaching as a profession but as some kind of Mickey D.'s job, then it seems to make sense.

Naturally, principals have ALL of the power to declare teachers as "unsatisfactory" after decades of flawless evaluations.