Pop Quiz! How Much Should Student Performance Factor Into Teacher Evaluations?

In a recent Sunday edition of the New York Times Magazine, the paper posed a multiple choice question:
How much should raising student test scores count in teacher evaluations?

a) 35%
b) 50%
c) 100%
d) Not at all

President Barack Obama's Race to the Top program is challenging state legislators all over the country to find a way to improve education performance at public schools. Evaluating teachers and rewarding or punishing them based in part on their students' test scores was one of the points the contest would evaluate.

Florida's legislators thought 50 percent was fair, though many people who never read the bill (including some teachers) thought the bill required 100 percent.

Florida ended up marking d) Not at all.

Though both the House and Senate passed the bill, Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed it based on a flood of complaints from teachers' unions and their friends.

If you're interested in what other states thought, here's an example from the New York Times article ...

"In Tennessee, Gov. Phil Bredesen, also a Democrat, pushed the Legislature to pass laws allowing more charter schools and making student test scores 50 percent of the annual teacher evaluations. The statewide teachers union ended up supporting both bills.

"In 2009 the Gates foundation provided a $90 million grant to the Memphis school system -- the state's largest -- on the condition that teachers there allow 35 percent of their performance ratings to be based on student test scores."