More money, that's the ticket

What follows is not even close to the most egregious bullshit spouted by the education bureaucrats, but it's a subtly telling indication of how they run things at School Boards across the country, as well as the Department of Education. Duval County, the Times-Union reports, has landed $9.6 million in federal grant money to “attract, support and reward” teachers, specifically in struggling schools.
The counties were selected based on their plans to “develop, reward and support effective teachers and principals in high-needs schools based on evaluations that include multiple measures, including student growth.”
I’m confused: teachers will get rewarded if their students grow? Seems like a sweet deal for a middle-school teacher with a good HGH connection.
Let’s dispense with the obvious point: There’s really no good evidence that throwing money at bad schools will magically turn bad students into even mediocre ones. There was a decade-long case study in Kansas City, but you’ll never hear professional educators mention that. Also, as anyone who has set foot in a Duval County School can affirm, lack of money isn’t the problem in a school district that has tens of thousands of computers, to take one example.
OK, so this funding will go to teacher incentives, not equipment. Still no evidence that will work. But evidence doesn’t seem to be a requirement. Also, among the multiple measures is ‘student growth.’ That’s a quote, not the reporter’s words. It’s also an indication the educrats will leave themselves plenty of leeway when picking winners and losers. In other words, it won’t be based strictly on those irksome standardized tests.
But the details of those plans locally still have to be ironed out, as the districts work with union leaders.
I, for one, am greatly relieved to know the union will have a say in how their incentive pay will be divvied up. They have demonstrated repeatedly that they have the best interests of the students at heart. There’s probably no realistic hope that any decisions along these lines can get made without the unions getting involved. But that doesn’t mean it should be that way. Here’s an idea (not mine, but I like it): anyone who is a member of a public sector union forfeits their right to vote. (That noise you just heard was Nelson Cuba’s head exploding.)
In both districts, teachers and principals won’t see incentive money until the second year of the grant. The first year is about planning.
Perfect. There is a medium-sized trough ($1.2 billion) of federal money for school districts to throw at teachers, and said districts certainly had to fill out lots of forms and get shit notarized in triplicate and toe various federal lines to even qualify for the money -- yet upon landing some of the largesse they have no idea what they’re going to do with it. Requires a year of planning. Right now they’re ‘planning to plan.’