Obama's Sister Souljah?
Posted: Friday, July 06, 2007 12:52 PM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Democrats
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
It might not quite be a Sister Souljah moment, but as we mentioned yesterday, Obama called for merit pay for teachers while speaking at the National Education Association’s annual conference.
Merit pay is something teachers unions have been against since it was -- as they see it -- implemented in certain school districts unfairly and subjectively. The unions object to principals and administrators being given carte blanche in identifying worthy teachers.
Largely, the issue is one of connotation. We haven’t been able to get a hold of the NEA yet, but the American Federation of Teachers -- the second largest union behind the NEA -- is for what they call “professional compensation.” Professional compensation is essentially merit pay with the local unions being brought into the fold to come up with standards. To that end, the union appears to be with Obama because of how he phrased it.
“What I want to do is work with teachers," Obama said yesterday, "and where we can work with teachers to come up with ways to set those kinds of professional standards, then I want to be part of that process. But I'm not going to do it to you; I'm going to do it with you."
Rob Weil, deputy director of educational issues for the AFT, said, “I think that using the term ‘merit pay’ is, I would hope that when he learns the issue a little bit more he might refrain from using that. He talks about working with the teachers, and that is a huge improvement. Some people want to do that to the teachers. They try to go around the teachers.”
Without mentioning him by name, Dodd criticized Obama’s stance on merit pay when he released this statement today: “The service of all our public school teachers is meritorious and deserves our support. I fear that instituting a merit pay system may encourage teaching to the test and discourage teachers from working in schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students. As the principle [sic] author of the No Child Left Behind Reform Act, I believe that we should instead focus our reform efforts on measuring school performance based on individual student's growth, targeting resources to where they are most needed, and adding a greater degree of common sense to the teacher certification process."
Wait a minute. Aside from his criticism of Obama, does Dodd really want to be identified with the largely unpopular No Child Left Behind? *** Update *** The Dodd folks tell us that Dodd is the author of the NCLB Reform Act, not the original NCLB.
