Michigan's teacher of the year has been taken up by StudentsFirst and the Mackinac Center as part of their campaign against teachers unions. But he's not on board with their corporate education policy agenda, Eclectablog reports.

The Koch brothers-funded, ALEC-affiliated Mackinac Center and Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst have been blasting around teacher of the year Gary Abud's salary, emphasizing that it's below average in his district—he has only been teaching for six years—and claiming that unions are keeping good teachers down. But Abud tells Eclectablog that "I know how contracts are structured and that I’m newer in this field. In many fields entry level is lower than veteran level on compensation packages. In almost every field, I would imagine." He notes that when he worked in biomedical research, people's salaries went up as they spent longer on the job, too.

So Abud is definitely not joining the Mackinac Center and StudentsFirst in pushing the idea that his below-average salary is a reason to support a bill that would base teacher salaries primarily on "job performance." And if you know anything about how corporate education policy groups want to measure job performance, you know why Eclectablog has labeled this the "'Teach to the Test' Teacher Pay Act."

Not only does Gary Abud not back that teacher pay bill, he strongly questions the kind of test-based assessment that groups like the Mackinac Center and StudentsFirst are pushing. Come below the fold for the Michigan teacher of the year's thoughts on teaching and standardized testing.