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On Feb. 3, the Washington Teachers' Union presented Chancellor Michelle Rhee with its counter-proposal to her radical red track-green track contract. Under Rhee's plan, the "green" track would require teachers to give up tenure in exchange for the possibility of large merit-pay bonuses financed by philanthropies. Alternatively, they could choose to retain their tenure privileges and stick to a traditional, seniority-based salary ladder with a lower ceiling. That would have been the "red" track.Now the WTU has launched a website with further details on what they are proposing as an alternative, maintaining that it would still be "the most expansive performance-pay program in the country." Emphasis below is mine:
Rather then red and green, the proposal offers a very different vision for performance pay-that is aligned with student success but rooted in fairness, trust and shared responsibility. It includes schoolwide performance pay, additional individual pay options and a career-ladder program that recognizes individual teacher performance and service in a comprehensive way."Schoolwide performance pay" means that when the academic achievement of all the students in a school improves on aggregate, every teacher in that building would receive a salary bonus. "Additional individual pay options" and the "career ladder program" likely refer to bonuses for teachers who take on extra responsibilities, such as mentoring less experienced colleagues. Recognizing individual teacher performance "in a comprehensive way" is likely a nod toward creating a sophisticated teacher evaluation system that relies on more than just student test scores, and includes classroom observations of teaching. The WTU may be saying that high evaluations should lead to salary bonuses, but it's hard to tell without further details, which have not been released.--Dana Goldstein
