District officials said teachers can't be fired simply because of a low rating based on student test scores.
Under the No Child Left Behind law, that means that they have to take steps to improve student test scores.
At the same time, Obama said, schools should be judged on criteria other than student test performance, including attendance rate.
The spat in Seattle comes as districts nationwide wrestle with how best to use student test scores to rate teachers.
The extra pay was three times more effective in boosting student test scores than spending the same money on teaching materials.
The research, based on the US-wide National Education Longitudinal Survey, found that a teacher's gender had "large effects on student test performance".
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Policymakers have pushed mostly carrot-and-stick remedies: firing underperforming teachers, giving merit pay to high performers, penalizing schools with poor student test scores.
The teacher rankings were based on student test scores that were adjusted for factors such as absenteeism, poverty, race and class size.
To qualify for federal funding, the state is forcing the city and other school districts to judge teacher performance based in part on student test scores.
But union leaders worry that in New York, where teacher evaluations are based in part on student test results, teachers will be blamed for low scores.
Those who oppose the gathering momentum to evaluate teachers based in significant part on student test scores argue that it will drive good teachers from the neediest schools.
Accountability, particularly as measured by student test scores, has brought sweeping changes to education and promises more, but many teachers feel the changes are imposed with scant input from classroom-level educators.
New student test scores released by the U.S. Department of Education last week showed that Washington's fourth-graders made the largest gains in math among big city school systems in the past two years.
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New York City has forfeited hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars because union and city officials haven't agreed on a new evaluation system that would judge teachers, in part, on student test scores.
In February, state officials reached an agreement with the union that allows up to 40% of a teacher's rating to be based on student test scores and 60% on other measures, such as classroom observations and, potentially, student and parent surveys.
An aggressive campaign could recruit 26, 000 new teachers in-state and from across the country in very short order from teachers who are desperate to find work, and who will not mind working longer days or being held accountable for student test scores.
The New York Times woke many with a start over the weekend when it reported in its Sunday edition on a school in Arizona investing lots of money in technology but seemingly getting few results from the investment, as student test scores remained stagnant.
Scores released yesterday for the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment test showed that American 15-year-olds trailed far behind their peers from many industrialized countries.
It thrives on synergies between different areas of education: when a student flunks a test, its coaching arm can offer to help sort out his problems.
Each student completed the test alone, but half were told they were competing against ten other people and the other half that they were competing against 100.
Before the district put in a searchable database, he would have had to navigate scores of screens to see how each student scored in each test subcategory.
It is too early to determine if the initiative is the reason that we are meeting out desired outcomes, but early data does support that Phase One teachers are seeing increases in student learning from state test scores to performance-based measures.
Rubbish and graffiti often go hand-in-hand but spray painting pavements could stop people littering - at least that is the theory a Cardiff student is putting to the test.
Drawing input from 3, 000 classroom teachers, the project highlighted several measures that schools should use to assess teacher performance, including test data, student surveys and assessments by trained evaluators.
On education, the Bloomberg administration was among the nation's forerunners in changing the culture of public schools and testing new ideas to raise test scores and student achievement in the mayor's first two terms with then-Chancellor Joel Klein.
The success of Little Cyclops however has helped him pay-off mounting student fees and encouraged him to further test his powers of invention.
If the test is that important, and the health and safety of the student athlete is paramount, why is a liability waiver sufficient cause to say never mind to the test?
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Seth Dewboys travels west from a mostly white Louisville, Kentucky, neighborhood to an inner-city school with high test scores and a racially mixed student body.
It's clear that systems that gauge student, teacher and school performance on standardized test scores put intense pressure on those results and inevitably tempt people to finagle them.
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