Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced some controversial proposals for education reform Wednesday while addressing the Center for American Progress in the nation's capital.

Speaking beside U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the mayor announced that the city will begin immediately using student test scores to help decide whether a teacher gets tenure.

The state recently passed a law banning the use of student test scores in tenure decisions.

Bloomberg said a close reading of the law shows that the city can use the test scores for teachers up for tenure this year. He said he has asked Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to begin using the test scores in that decision-making process.

"We should use all means that we have to evaluate who the better teachers are, promote them, pay them more if we can," said the mayor. "And, at the same time, those that aren't up to standards, give them the remedial work that will make them integral teachers, and after all that, they can't cut the mustard, then I'm sorry, they just can't work in our school system."

In his speech, Bloomberg also laid out some other education reforms proposals, including using state grant money to attract top math, science and special needs educators to low-income schools.

He also called for an end to a policy that calls for principals to lay off the newest-hired teachers first, even if they're doing a better job than teachers with more seniority.

He also called for limiting the amount of time a teacher without a school to work at can get paid while waiting for their next job in the public school system.

Finally, he said he wants to eliminate the charter schools cap and put a stop to "rubber room practices," which takes teachers under investigation for misconduct and places them in reassignment centers, where they are still paid.

In response to the mayor's proposals, the city's teachers union says, “Department of Education mismanagement has created many of the personnel issues like the ATR pool and the rubber rooms that the mayor now cites as problems. These issues could have been, and still could be, resolved with better management and hard work, not legislation."

Many of these proposals would require approval from state lawmakers.

It is likely that Bloomberg will have difficulty getting many of these measures through Albany.

Bloomberg says that if these proposals pass, it will give the city a competitive edge when vying against other cities for $5 billion in federal education grants that the Obama administration is offering up as part of a nationwide education reform initiative.