Education
Related: About this forumHawaii Teachers Reject Race To The Top
Hawaiian teachers recently rejected a contract calling for performance-based evaluations and compensation, a requirement by the Race to the Top (RttT) grant their state won from the Obama administration, according to Valerie Strauss.
67% of 9,000 teachers, counselors and others in the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) rejected the contract, the first time in the unions 44-year history that its members rejected a contract already approved by the state board of education. As a result, Hawaii was warned by the U.S. Department of Education that its $75 million RttT grant was on High-risk status, something Hawaiian teachers should be proud of.
HSTA is the first state teachers union to reject the poisoned Koolaid from the Obama after it had already been granted administration. This rebuff, coming from Obamas home state, is a particularly harsh blow to his signature RttT and portends increasing rejections by other state teachers unions.
In order for states to win RttT grants, they must expand charter schools, evaluate teachers based on students standardized test scores and implement other reforms that increase private investors opportunities to profit from public education. Because states have been starved of revenue due to years of corporate and personal income taxes cuts, most have been jumping on the bandwagon and accepting this nominal federal assistance in exchange for giving away their public education systems to private educational management organizations, for-profit charter operators and test publishers.
Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/01/hawaii-teachers-reject-race-to-top.html
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)this RttT crap stinks, and I say 'good on ya' Hawaiian teachers.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Do Obama's kids have to take these tests?
Are their teachers assessed by the scores of their students on these tests?
I'm sure the kids in that private school the Obama children attend would score very high, but I understand that the worst thing about those tests is not the fact that kids from upper middle class families score higher than kids from struggling families, but that teachers have to waste so much of the kids' time on preparing for the tests and then taking them.
So, do the Obama girls have to waste their precious classroom time like the public school kids do?
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)roody
(10,849 posts)serve kids anyway. Good for Hawaii!
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)I'm kidding.
"Thank you , Mr. Lenin, for the lovely necktie you have most thoughtfully furnished for me on this occasion, Capitalist Appreciation Day."