So, yesterday's hearing on the Miller-McKeon bill--er, discussion draft--was, shall we say, interesting. AFT Executive Vice President Toni Cortese testified, as did Reg Weaver, President of the NEA.

Their testimony on Title II of the "discussion draft" led to a lively exchange with Congressman Miller, who contended that both the AFT and the NEA were involved in negotiations on the TEACH Act, the original House bill that essentially became Title II of the discussion draft.

Cortese acknowledged that the AFT was pleased with many features of the TEACH Act, but pointed out that in our June 2005 letter to Congress we had voiced serious concerns about the pay-for-performance provisions of the bill.  Here is the relevant paragraph from the AFT letter:

While the AFT is supportive of the overall bill, we do have a specific concern about its support for programs that use student test scores to evaluate teachers. We are concerned that such “value-added” programs have not been thoroughly developed, researched and rigorously evaluated. Given this, we agree with you that it is essential that teachers be a part of any decision to use a value-added system. We hope that measurement systems will become more refined and credible in the future. Nevertheless, we believe that more research, study and psychometric guidelines are necessary before this evaluation tool is used to reward teachers.

Ed Week's NCLB-Act II here, the New York Times here. Stay tuned.