cawacko
Well-known member
Here's an area where I strongly agree with Obama. The first sentence in the article states,
"The Obama administration says it wants to remake public education around the principle that the best teachers should be promoted and rewarded, regardless of seniority."
I hate the teachers union. I understand unions do what is in the best interest of the people in the union. But in the case of the teachers union what is in the best interest of the teachers isn't always/often isn't in the best interest of the kids.
I don't know how Obama accomplishes this without completely pissing out one of his biggest backers but if he really goes through with this then my hat is off to him.
D.C. Schools Chief Targets Tenure
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration says it wants to remake public education around the principle that the best teachers should be promoted and rewarded, regardless of seniority.
And a brawl over just that idea is now playing out in the shadow of the White House.
The chancellor of Washington's school system, Michelle Rhee, is wrestling with one of the most expensive, worst performing school systems in the country. The dropout rate has hit 40%, and the cost per student is $14,000 a year. Buildings are crumbling and thousands of parents have abandoned the system, which serves about 45,000 students.
Ms. Rhee is trying to reduce what she believes to be a bloated school management and wrest more control over the district's affairs from the powerful local teachers' union. She has replaced principals, laid off teachers and closed underperforming schools.
She has also challenged what she feels is one of the biggest impediments to improvement: tenure, or strong job protections for teachers. The idea is to promise teachers much richer salaries, as well as performance bonuses, if they give up tenure. Good performers would be rewarded, poor performers gotten rid of.
In September, the 39-year-old Ms. Rhee, citing a looming budget gap, laid off nearly 400 school employees, including 266 teachers. The dismissals came weeks after Ms. Rhee finished hiring 934 new teachers over the summer. Ms. Rhee said she was initiating the layoffs based on "quality, not by seniority."
The Washington Teachers' Union filed a grievance and a lawsuit against the district over the layoffs, calling them "a blatant violation" of the union contract and a pretext for dismissing veterans without proper cause, which the district denies.
The feud has turned into a grudge match between Ms. Rhee and Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, which has intervened directly in the local contract dispute. Ms. Rhee "has so poisoned the environment that I am not sure that we can ever get back to a good situation here," said Ms. Weingarten.
Ms. Rhee said the union fears the district's layoffs based on job performance will set a precedent for changes nationally. "If you ask any urban school superintendent, they would wish they could to exactly the same thing," she said.
The fight has become an issue for the Obama administration, which is preparing to award more than $4 billion in grants to states that are realigning their schools to reward teachers and principals for improved student performance. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has extolled other school districts, such as in New Haven, Conn., that have brokered deals recently with their unions, but he hasn't waded into the D.C. fight.
Still, Mr. Duncan said he wants to see the D.C. spat end soon. "We generally don't weigh in on local labor disputes, but this has gone on too long and they need to bring it to closure," he said in an interview. "There are a lot of good ideas on the table and this agreement could be a national model," he said.
Ms. Rhee told a group of corporate chief executives at a Wall Street Journal gathering in Washington this week that it made no sense for a struggling district to ignore teacher quality when initiating layoffs, an issue she called "one of the age-old sacred cows of unionism."
Under her plan, proposed in the summer of 2008 during negotiations over a new teacher contract, the district proposed significantly increasing teacher salaries and offering performance-based bonuses in return for teachers giving up some job security. She said the new pay scale would enable the highest-performing first-year teachers to make up to $78,000 a year, up from $45,000. Veterans could have earned as much as $131,000, roughly double what they had been paid. Those who wanted to keep their contractual job protections could opt out of the bonus plan.
"The union roundly rejected it -- went ballistic," she said, adding that the national teachers' unions viewed it as an assault on tenure.
Ms. Weingarten said the negotiations were close to completion, but the layoffs in September scuttled that effort.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125860189986054965.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
"The Obama administration says it wants to remake public education around the principle that the best teachers should be promoted and rewarded, regardless of seniority."
I hate the teachers union. I understand unions do what is in the best interest of the people in the union. But in the case of the teachers union what is in the best interest of the teachers isn't always/often isn't in the best interest of the kids.
I don't know how Obama accomplishes this without completely pissing out one of his biggest backers but if he really goes through with this then my hat is off to him.
D.C. Schools Chief Targets Tenure
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration says it wants to remake public education around the principle that the best teachers should be promoted and rewarded, regardless of seniority.
And a brawl over just that idea is now playing out in the shadow of the White House.
The chancellor of Washington's school system, Michelle Rhee, is wrestling with one of the most expensive, worst performing school systems in the country. The dropout rate has hit 40%, and the cost per student is $14,000 a year. Buildings are crumbling and thousands of parents have abandoned the system, which serves about 45,000 students.
Ms. Rhee is trying to reduce what she believes to be a bloated school management and wrest more control over the district's affairs from the powerful local teachers' union. She has replaced principals, laid off teachers and closed underperforming schools.
She has also challenged what she feels is one of the biggest impediments to improvement: tenure, or strong job protections for teachers. The idea is to promise teachers much richer salaries, as well as performance bonuses, if they give up tenure. Good performers would be rewarded, poor performers gotten rid of.
In September, the 39-year-old Ms. Rhee, citing a looming budget gap, laid off nearly 400 school employees, including 266 teachers. The dismissals came weeks after Ms. Rhee finished hiring 934 new teachers over the summer. Ms. Rhee said she was initiating the layoffs based on "quality, not by seniority."
The Washington Teachers' Union filed a grievance and a lawsuit against the district over the layoffs, calling them "a blatant violation" of the union contract and a pretext for dismissing veterans without proper cause, which the district denies.
The feud has turned into a grudge match between Ms. Rhee and Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, which has intervened directly in the local contract dispute. Ms. Rhee "has so poisoned the environment that I am not sure that we can ever get back to a good situation here," said Ms. Weingarten.
Ms. Rhee said the union fears the district's layoffs based on job performance will set a precedent for changes nationally. "If you ask any urban school superintendent, they would wish they could to exactly the same thing," she said.
The fight has become an issue for the Obama administration, which is preparing to award more than $4 billion in grants to states that are realigning their schools to reward teachers and principals for improved student performance. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has extolled other school districts, such as in New Haven, Conn., that have brokered deals recently with their unions, but he hasn't waded into the D.C. fight.
Still, Mr. Duncan said he wants to see the D.C. spat end soon. "We generally don't weigh in on local labor disputes, but this has gone on too long and they need to bring it to closure," he said in an interview. "There are a lot of good ideas on the table and this agreement could be a national model," he said.
Ms. Rhee told a group of corporate chief executives at a Wall Street Journal gathering in Washington this week that it made no sense for a struggling district to ignore teacher quality when initiating layoffs, an issue she called "one of the age-old sacred cows of unionism."
Under her plan, proposed in the summer of 2008 during negotiations over a new teacher contract, the district proposed significantly increasing teacher salaries and offering performance-based bonuses in return for teachers giving up some job security. She said the new pay scale would enable the highest-performing first-year teachers to make up to $78,000 a year, up from $45,000. Veterans could have earned as much as $131,000, roughly double what they had been paid. Those who wanted to keep their contractual job protections could opt out of the bonus plan.
"The union roundly rejected it -- went ballistic," she said, adding that the national teachers' unions viewed it as an assault on tenure.
Ms. Weingarten said the negotiations were close to completion, but the layoffs in September scuttled that effort.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125860189986054965.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
