Bush is trying to turn teachers into whores.

The Bush administration is handing out money for teachers who raise student test scores, the first federal effort to reward classroom performance with bonuses.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings planned to announce the first of 16 grants, worth $42 million, including $5.5 million for Ohio, on Monday. The government has not announced the other grant winners.

Teachers normally are paid based on their years in class and their education. Yet more school districts are experimenting with merit pay, and now the federal government is, too.

It is not always popular. Teachers' unions generally oppose pay-for-performance plans, saying they do not fairly measure quality and do nothing to raise base teacher pay.

Which teacher do you want? The one that is dedicated to nurturing your child's unique gifts and interests, or the one that is motivated by bringing class scores up high enough to get a pay-off from the government?

Most teachers enter the field, not to get rich, but because of a genuine desire to enrich the lives of children. They are rewarded by observing a child overcome an obstacle in their learning or by the smiles they see when a child's eyes light up as they learn something truly fascinating. Or perhaps from hearing the parents recount how excited their son or daughter were to come to school that day. No amount of money can replace that feeling. That sense of accomplishement is not for sale.

The effectiveness of American education cannot be determined solely through test scores. The drop out rate in this country is 30%! Does anybody really believe that teachers motivated by greed are going to try to keep those children in schools knowing that they will help keep test scores low. How will that teacher get his/her pay off if "Johnny" doesn't test well? Making test scores the focus of all education is a losing propostion. It fails to take into account the needs of those more eclectic students who may have much to offer our society, but whose potential cannot be captured through a simple high school test score.

History is filled with poor students who became great men and women.

Einstein failed the entrance exam for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School on Zurich. What if he had been discouraged from trying again?

Edison had such difficulty with the boring studies at his schools that he dropped out.

Mozart, Beethoven, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, how do you think these great minds would have been affected if their school life was focused on test scores and conformity? The world would be a much less beautiful place if the genius of these people had been extinguished in the rush to homogenize the student body.

Perhaps it is time to stand up to this administration and tell them to keep their hands off of the minds of our children.