Posted on 07/03/2008 6:16:20 AM PDT by SoftballMominVA
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is proposing a contract that would give mid-level teachers who are paid $62,000 yearly the opportunity to earn more than $100,000 -- but they would have to give up seniority and tenure rights.....Under the proposal, the school system would establish two pay tiers, red and green....Teachers in the red tier would receive traditional raises and would maintain tenure. Those who voluntarily go into the green tier would receive thousands of dollars in bonuses and raises, funded with foundation grants, for relinquishing tenure.
Teachers in the green tier would be reviewed yearly and would be allowed to continue in their jobs only if they passed an evaluation and boosted students' test scores
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If Rhee can get this to go through it will be ground-breaking and may change the face of teacher contracts in both union and non-union districts.
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This would crack the union like Humpty Dumpty.
Sorry - you are not on my list on this computer, made the correction :)
There is a provision in the discussion that if you don’t want to ‘go green’ you can opt out of this. But how long will that last when someone in the red zone is teaching next to someone making 25k a year more?
Teachers’ unions would let the scheme go through in order to get that big money. Then, once in, they would sue the daylights out of any district that denied teachers (especially women or minorities) new contracts once they’ve opted for “the green”.
Giving teacher more money to actually do their jobs the right way? Crazy.
Rhee is crafty, I have to hand it to her.
No, not just to do their jobs, but to GIVE UP TENURE, GIVE UP SENIORITY, and make their jobs contingent on evaluations and student performance.
And how would the loss of bumping privileges really affect the teachers? Public education isn't cyclical. It's not like a downturn in the stock market is going to lead to massive layoffs where such privileges would seriously come into play.
To me, it just looks like a sneaky way to slip in an absurd bonus structure.
Apparently, about 20 or 30 years ago, teacher were given at least two options on how their contributions were invested, one less risky, the one more risky. A good number of teachers checked the more risky option. 30 years later and a booming stock market-these teachers were getting a larger pension.
Union officials in the teacher's union howled with anger-it was not fair-if you checked one box your pension was a $1000.00 a month more than if you checked the other box.
It just was not fair. My guess is that the union will demand after a few years that teachers in the red zone are paid as much as teachers in the green zone but get to stay red
Hrm. I am sort of on the wall about this one.
While I like the concept, it must be done on a case by case basis. For instance, I teach low performing students. If I raise scores of those students, I have really done something.
What about those who teach the consistently high performing? Do they get anything for that? I mean, most of those kids will be at the maximum point anyway, so there is no room for improvement and ipso facto, no performance raise.
Done correctly and more importantly, fairly, this could be a good thing. I would like to know up front and in writing what would be taken into consideration and such. There are a lot of mitigating factors going into something like this before I would sign off on it.
Knee-jerk reaction is to think ‘Oh Yeah! Stick it to them,” but there are too many things that can go wrong and a good teacher can be without a job.
I agree. But does anyone really think these teachers would lose their jobs? They would still belong to the union, right?
Just think about this if you are a teacher with just a few years to go for retirement. Take this new proposal, and enhance your retirement salary tremendously. This is a great offer for them.
You’re not familiar with how the public schools actually make decisions. Wherever tenure and workrules permit the majority of principals haveused their office to reward friends and supporters. Rhee, being a follower of Joel Klein, the Clintons’ favorite lawyer since he produced Foster’s suicide note,is trying to one up her mentor’s efforts in NYC. Once these rules are in place the very opaque nature of educational statistics could well make the DC school system look like a recreation of Andy Jackson’s Spoils System.And with no real improvement in the true education of the kids beyond knowing how to respond to an exam.
That’s a pity. I have known since our son went through school in Minnesota that public schools are run for the convenience of the education establishment.
While I applaud the new superintendant in D.C. for this effort and see it as a creative approach to working with or working around the established system, it still frosts me that these non-performing people can’t be fired. It seems that all government employees, especially teachers, have these various guarantees about salaries, pension, health benefits and job security that nobody else has. We work for them instead of them working for us. It will all collapse of its own weight.
It may be an attempt to weed out the capitalists and conservative teachers.
very interesting...
like shag, i am especially interested in the details yet to be determined. my primary special ed students can and have made great progress, but passing the sol’s that begin in the 3rd grade can be a very different story.
many years back i was the victim of bumping rights. i had worked as a teacher consultant for the early childhood programs in my district for 5 years but i had only been a teacher there for a total of 7 years. when it came time to cut a consultant position, i had lower seniority than another teacher who had taught there about 10 years but only one as a part time consultant. she took over the early childhood programs even though she had only worked with the upper elementary populations. seniority doesn’t always equal more qualified. i left the state.
I don’t think there will be too many takers that will relinquish tenure, although they ARE making it very tempting to do so.
Divide and conquer; I like it....
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