The issue of the week in the House appears to be testing. In the Senate, it’s teacher quality.
At least that’s the conclusion you can draw from reading the reactions to yesterday’s introduction of the All Children Can Achieve Act. The bill is mentioned here.
The bill follows many of the recommendations of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on NCLB, which would require schools to use students’ test scores to evaluate their teachers.
New York City Chancellor Joel I. Klein likes the bill because it focuses on “teacher performance, not on teacher credentials,” according to this Associated Press report.
The NEA’s Joel Packer responds that allowing uncertified teachers into classrooms is “experimenting with children, and then two or three years after the fact seeing if these teachers are doing a good job.”
In this story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., highlights seed money in the bill that could be used to lure the best teachers to the lowest-performing schools.
The Senate is bound to duke it out over testing. But the reaction to this bill shows that teacher issues will be a big battle in NCLB reauthorization.
