At least our union rights weren’t pimped cheap.

I guess I owe Audrey Soglin, the IEA Executive Director and retired ex-president Ken Swanson an apology.

For several years I have ridden them kind of hard for selling out our union rights and getting nothing in return.

In order to qualify for Race to the Top money several years ago, Audrey was appointed by the governor to head the committee that drafted legislation that tied individual teacher evaluation to measures of student growth performance. Most figure that measure will be one or several standardized tests. Even now nobody, including Audrey, can say much more than that. Local Associations and local school boards are still pretty much in the dark about how this will work.

Our local Association team of negotiators recently met with Soglin, and she couldn’t tell them much.

At the time that the legislation was passed by the Illinois General Assembly it was to qualify Illinois for about $500,000 in Race to the Top money.

I was appalled that Audrey would sell our rights to locally bargain teacher evaluation so cheap.

And then we didn’t even win the Race. We had the law. We didn’t receive any Race to the Top money.

It turns out I was wrong. I apologize, Audrey.

This week the Department of Education announced that Illinois would receive $43 million in Race to the Top money.

I feel better knowing that when our union leadership sells out our rights, we’re not cheap.

Of course, don’t think that money is going into classrooms based on local needs. The money must be spent on things Arne Duncan and the Department of Education cares about: student assessments, teacher evaluations, things like that.

Competing states committed to make changes such as improving principal and teacher evaluation systems and turning around under-performing schools. They also were asked to show specifically how they would improve science, technology, engineering and math instruction.

How will Illinois prove that? More assessments. Weeks and weeks more of assessments.