Teacher Incentive Grants—Bye, Bye

According to the Education Week article “Big City Districts Bail on Teacher-Incentive Grants” by Jaclyn Zubrzycki, the cities Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York will not be using the $88 million in Federal grant money because they have not been able to get union support for performance-based teaching.  Apparently, this development wasn’t unexpected, since according to William J. Slotnik of the Community Training and Assistance Center, “a lot of folks are applying to TIF (Teacher Incentive Fund), but not doing the base-building you need to do to do this well.” Much of the disagreement between districts and unions focuses on how teacher performance is determined. Standardized tests and how they are used in evaluation of teachers seem to be at the center of the controversy.