NEA

Great article today covering our start in Missouri. It has been such an amazing response from some amazing people. Our first certified teacher completed last week - - an electrical engineer who has been teaching in a private school for three years.

If you have not read The Slate's coverage of the education reform rally in Denver before the Democratic National Convention then I strongly urge you to do so now. This is truly a watershed moment in American politics. Democrats are finally realizing that the teacher’s unions are doing their job – working hard to get better pay and working conditions for their members and if that conflicts with improving schools, schools lose.

The last few months we have been working in Utah to help them develop a way to recognize great teachers. Some of their more forward thinking legislators put forth a modest bill to provide $275,000 to teachers who complete our Distinguished Teacher program. That program recognizes teachers based on student achievement through value add analysis (40%), live observation (30%), subject matter mastery (15%) and principal evaluation (15%).

I cannot believe that any professional, yet alone an education professional, would say what Reg Weaver said in Oklahoma. It is truly offensive - and I am not talking about the thinly veiled reference to ABCTE.

As for the ABCTE part, how about examining the research, instead of just criticizing something new, for a change Reg.