Multiple views of "Race to the Top"

In Madison Wednesday, President Obama said the federal government plans to hand out more than $4 billion throughout the country to improve education. If Wisconsin wants to even try to get some of that money it has to change how it evaluates teachers.

Right now standardized student test scores do not impact teacher evaluations, but to get federal money, test scores would need to be considered.

"Children's test scores are not necessarily the best indicator of the quality of the teacher," said Charlotte Foth. Foth teaches high school English. She is also a union representative for the Menasha school district.

"I think we'd be foolish to turn down stimulus money," said Foth. "If we can improve student achievement through this money with better teacher training, that's wonderful. But if it's going to hurt teachers that are doing a good job in spite of the fact that some of their students aren't going to succeed, it's really not fair."

"I don't have a problem with a test score being used to evaluate a teacher as long as it's not the only piece of information that's used to evaluate a teacher," said Dave Harswick, president of the Green Bay Education Association . The association is an affiliate of the state teacher's union.

"I'm hoping we're doing this for the right reasons," said Harswick. "My concern is that we make these changes and then we're told we don't have access to this money. And I'm concerned with that when the secretary of education has said that only 10 or 20 states may have access to these dollars, and quite frankly you've got 50 states that are struggling to fund their public education systems, that bothers me too."

"The information is still sort of unfolding," said Kaukauna Superintendent Lloyd McCabe.

McCabe says even if the state approves the changes, the teachers union would still have to sign on.

"If you look at what that really means to a school district of any size here in the valley or even Green Bay, it's about $80 million maybe for the whole state of Wisconsin. You take half of that and send it to Milwaukee, greater Milwaukee area, you may have $100,000 on average per school district. I'm not sure if it's worth all of this fuss," said McCabe.

It appears there are not guarantees how much money , in any, the state would get if it changes the way teachers are evaluated.

The federal secretary of education says 10 to 20 states will likely get the federal education funding. The state Assembly will review teacher performance as it relates to student test scores, and other education issues, Thursday.