The New York Times coverage of the recent National Education Association (NEA) convention focused on the inconsequential, while paying little notice to what harbored fundamental significance. It aimed its spotlight and lingered on what it referred to as a shift in position: "... the nation's largest teachers' union
on Monday affirmed for the first time that evidence of student learning must be considered in the evaluations of school teachers around the country." (The New York Times, July 5, 2011.)
In fact, there was little in the way of concessions by the NEA on this point, as The New York Times article itself conceded: "But blunting the policy's potential impact, the union also made clear that it continued to oppose the use of existing standardized test scores to judge teachers ..." And the Times added that the NEA went on to insist that only those tests that have been shown to be "developmentally appropriate, scientifically valid and reliable for the purpose of measuring both student learning and a teacher's performance" should be used. This qualification eliminates almost, if not all, conventional tests.
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A governmental entity fail? No way!! How many other government agencies are failing, Postal Service (2 Billion in the hole), Social Security (been in the hole for years), ATF (2 fast 2 furious), DEA (failed war on drugs for 2 decades), FDA (approving medicines that have potentially more deadly side effects than help prevent what they were designed to do), I could go on. And the biggest FAIL is yet to come when the government takes over our health care. Just wait and see.
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