Washington Post reporter, Bill Turque today summarized the new WTU Teachers Contract approved ovewhelmingly by teachers in the vote tallied yesterday, and reported some reactions to the agreement. Only Randi Weingarten was honest enough to accurately characterize the agreement. Far from being a model for the country, the WTU agreement is a very traditional, "industrial" style contract, said Weingarten. "At the end of the day, this is still one of the industrial model contracts where a lot of the authority is reposed in the chancellor herself," said Weingarten, adding that the union was able to incorporate checks and balances into the contract that lend more transparency to Rhee's power. The aggregeous proposals to take away due process and impose a two-tiered salary structure put forward a year ago by the Chancellor were all eliminated. Commitments to professional development and joint engagement on evaluation and discipline, insisted upon by the union are new. So the AFT and the WTU made the best of a conflict-ridden, punitive approach being taken in the city. Other comments by Rhee, by Kate Walsh and by both Parker and Saunders seemed like pure wishful thinking and spin in comparison. Teachers voted for the much needed 21% pay increase, which by the way, only brings DCPS teachers up to par with surrounding suburban jurisdictions.
4 comments:
Thank you for posting this reflection. The Chancellor's e-newsletter from the Office of Family and Public Engagement last night had 5 bullet points about the agreement -- every one was about pay or tenure -- nothing about the conditions of teaching and learning that would make the real difference.
The focus is on the individual teacher -- yet the research shows that it is collaborative learning communities that make the greatest contribution to student success. It is also unclear how the contract will be sustained and coordinated. For example, if a teacher is moved to the highest pay scale due to student performance, but a couple of years later her students do not score as well, does her pay scale drop?
You're right, Deborah. Test scores are notoriously mercurial. A school that gets a large bump in scores one year is likely to see a drop the following year and vise versa. Individual teachers are being assessed based on scores of different students from one year to the next. Test results do tell you something and are worth the attention of evaluators and teachers being evaluated, but no test experts say that they can be an accurate read on the quality of teaching.The DCPS system, now enshrined in the contract treats scores as an accurate judgement. They are not.
The contract seems to have struck a compromise between protecting teachers and allowing principals to act arbitrarily, maintaining due process, but jettisoning strict seniority rules, all of which is fine, but the focus just has not been on teaching and learning conditions -- knowledge and skills, except in the vaguest terms -- generic professional development, etc. That's why although teachers clearly felt it deserved voting for, the contract in no way represents a national model for how to improve a school system. It is unclear whether the players in place in DCPS are capable of that. Teaching and respect for the craft just has not been sufficiently the focus of conversation for the past three years.
What this contract means for DC teachers is more teachers will be fired. Probationary teachers and excessed teachers are at great risk if they get excessed. If a principal doesn't pick them up they are history in the very near future. This does not have anything to do with how they perform.
Performance pay has yet to be even spelled out in this contract and won't even begin until 2011. The chancellor didn't address this issue because she and her team along with Mr. Parker and Ms. Weingarten didn't take the time to develop the guidelines for teachers. DC teachers won't have to worry about this, the private foundations will probably pull out when Rhee leaves in the fall.
I want to just share a concern I have based on clearly anecdotal evidence, discussions with teachers I know. Lots of teachers voted on this to "get the money and run." Teachers with enough seniority see this as getting a big cash bump for the back pay and an increase to their retirement, giving a good cushion before they retire. I'm quite concerned that a core idea of Ms. Rhee's is that if we lose the private funding we can just reduce the number of teachers, increasing class size. Smaller class size would be a better use of these funds, or alternatively extra pay for longer days or longer school years. The only pay for performance models that I've seen any data indicating success are those that pay teachers more for extra time, not test scores. Such a missed opportunity....
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