This is just a brief note: according to Ken Bernstein, a high school AP government teacher in Prince George's County, Maryland, the county administration decided arbitrarily to change the weighting of grades for AP classes away from assignments and tests to class participation… without telling the teachers until after they had printed and distributed syllabi. Apparently, AP teachers are irate, not only because this upsets the systems they've tried to develop around a certain weighting but because this makes them look like fools.
So let me state this pretty bluntly: from my perspective, if Ken is reporting this accurately, it's the Prince George's County administration that should all have egg on its face for undermining teachers.
Any Prince George's County administrator who e-mails me or comments is free to explain what happened, and I'll update this entry with that response.
Apparently, in the competition between teachers and admins, admins won.
Same is true for higher ed.
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article/4941