How about that headline for alphabet soup? I've been getting a lot of mail on two recent blog items about the hiring of teachers in difficult times, and some of the concerns that unions have. Some of the comments are worth additional discussion, so I'm going to share them here. In this item, I asked someone to explain the logic of laying off veterans and hiring Teach For America types. A couple of people, including commentator "Chris" below, directed me to this story out of North Carolina. The story says that Superintendent Peter Gorman plans to cut about 400 teachers ...

Alabama teachers must be cheering. The Yellowhammer State is the latest to discard some of its norm-referenced testing, according to the Birmingham News. I wrote a longer story last month about this trend. Interestingly, though, I found that while states were starting to pare standardized tests that didn't count toward NCLB, districts seem to be hanging on to their "benchmark" tests—tests that they use to determine whether kids are on track to passing the end-of-year NCLB tests. Tell us what's happening with testing in your district. Are you seeing cuts or is testing being preserved?...

Andy Rotherham has the scoop on an e-mail that the NEA reportedly sent out to its affiliates. Here's a sampling: "In all of the independent studies, more than 80 percent of TFA recruits have left teaching by year 4, just as they are beginning to become effective, costing districts about $20k apiece to replace them and adding to the high turnover rates in urban districts—which itself negatively affects school performance. The only studies that have found TFA recruits to be as effective as other teachers (including the recent Urban Institute North Carolina study they are touting—which was conducted...

So reports The New York Times in this article. The cuts apparently mean that young professionals who took out loans expecting them to be forgiven as they completed their first four or five years of teaching are basically stuck with them. The article also suggests that the Obama administration's move to end lender subsidies and to originate most student loans in-house could effectively shut down these types of teacher-loan programs. As I read this story, I couldn't help but wonder about the federal TEACH grants, which I wrote about here. Although called "grants," some experts say they really ought to ...

Which of these two teacher-related stories is more bizarre: this gag one from the satirical paper The Onion, or this real-life one about Mary Kay Letourneau, who went to prison for the statutory rape of a student (whom she later married) hosting "Hot for Teacher" night at a Seattle nightclub?...

Over the last decade, the teacher practice of using "formative assessments" has become a huge topic of interest. Though called assessments, in practice they're more like exercises teachers use to gather immediate feedback on whether a student is responding to an instructional technique, with reference to a particular curricular objective. Proponents say the practice has a strong research base showing it can dramatically improve student achievement. (And now that testing companies are labeling a lot of products as "formative," it's a big moneymaking endeavor, too.) But recently, some experts have suggested that it may be time to take a closer ...

Over at Flypaper there's a bit of a debate going on about the presence of teachers' unions and student achievement. I've been to enough education policy discussions to recognize two common tropes on this topic. One argument runs along these lines: Student achievement tends to be lowest in the South, which has many right-to-work states that don't allow collective bargaining for public employees. The other argument, which is at the center of the Flypaper debate, notes that the nation's highest-performing state on national tests, Massachusetts, has laws and policies that are generally favorable to unions. Although such observations make for ...

That's basically what American Federation of Teachers prez Randi Weingarten indicates in this letter to the district, reports Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools. Although principals are supposed to be hiring new teachers from the Absent Teacher Reserve pool of excessed teachers, schools can hire from other sources if they can't find a teacher of a high-need field from the ATR. In her letter, Weingarten intimates that the district is prioritizing teachers trained through alternative routes such as Teacher For America and New York City Teaching Fellows over traditional ed. school graduates. But a source just passed along an e-mail the ...

Washington sources offer their take on the Obama administration's prioritization of the Teacher Incentive Fund over other federal teacher programs.

AFT leader Randi Weingarten is calling the bluff of President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan, who say incentive-pay programs should be developed with teachers.