Pearson Fearsome?

According to this NY Times article from May 6, the people Pearson is hiring to evaluate my Teacher Performance Assessment video and my 7-page, single-spaced lesson plan are going to be paid about $75  for their efforts. I know EXACTLY how much effort I would put into a $75 assignment, because that's what I got paid writing 200-word articles for The Hollywood Reporter. If it was done in 20 minutes I considered myself lucky; half an hour was about average; and if I spent more than 45 minutes on it I was furious at the world. I'm going to be submitting 20 minutes' worth of video to Pearson, so if the evaluator watches the whole thing I'll be stunned. The first three minutes have to be fabulous, I'd say - and as for the lesson plan, my guess is that it hardly counts for anything at all.

The devil is in the details, as usual. Having outside professionals evaluate teachers and teaching  licensure candidates based on video and lesson plans sounds like a great idea, but if you're going to charge the teachers and candidates $300 for the privilege of being evaluated this way, you've got to pay at least half of that to the evaluator.