[s] seniority as a criterion for reduction in force” as it likes to say.  Translation:  the AEA does not want teachers judged or paid on the basis of merit.  The Goldwater Institute said this about this new law and the novel concept embodied in it:

Under the new law, the balance of power has shifted.  Now, teacher quality takes precedence over teacher seniority.  What a concept. Inadequate teachers must now show improvement within 60 days of being informed of their sub-par performance.  Gone is the 85 day (17 weeks or 4 months) improvement plan that used to be in place.  Now, under-performing teachers can have their pay reduced without affecting the pay of better teachers. (We needed a law for this?)

That last statement deserves repeating.  We needed a law for this? Unfortunately the answer is yes.  The teachers’ union is adamantly opposed to anything that rates or rewards teachers based on teaching ability and success in the classroom.  If Arizona is going to have an education system that works, i.e., that educates its children, the teachers and the teachers’ unions cannot control the system.  Let’s not let the Arizona teachers remake Arizona education into the models of the New York City schools or the Los Angeles Unified School District.  For more about the nightmares these systems have become see:

• Government Lunacy: New York Pays Teacher $100,000 a Year to Sit in Room and Do Nothing
• Almost Impossible to Fire Bad New York Teachers
• School District Gives Up Trying to Fire 79 Year Old 4th Grade Teacher After 5 Year
• High School Fires All Teachers Because Their Union Refused to Work 25 Minutes More Each Day
• LA Weekly’s “LAUSD’s Dance of the Lemons.”
• John Stossel’s “Impossible-to-fire Teachers”
• John Stossel’s “How to Fire an Incompetent Teacher:  An illustrated guide to New York’s public school bureaucracy”
• If you’ve gotten this far, you have to see the illustrated “epic spelunk through the New York school system”

See the Goldwater Institute‘s “Union trying to bully Legislators into changing law” and a story in the Arizona Republic: “Arizona law changes way teachers contract with districts” and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s “Because Policy Matters.”