Swift & Change Able

This is arguably the biggest education news in the U.S. so far this year.

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten reached agreement on a plan that ties teacher pay bonuses to student achievement.

Details in these kinds of agreements matter a great deal. So the plan’s practical implications will take time to emerge. There do seem to be some interesting and creatively written provisions:

“Pots of money would not be distributed teacher-by-teacher but are to be given to schools that have schoolwide gains in student test scores. It will be up to “compensation committees” at each school, made up of two teachers, the principal and a principal’s appointee, to distribute the money. They could choose to distribute it evenly among union members or single out exceptional teachers. They cannot distribute the money by seniority.”

The NCLB elephant in the room was fed peanuts by both reporters and Weingarten herself.

Reporter Elissa Gootman: “Both the Bush administration and Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House Education Committee, have tried to promote the concept of pay for performance. But leaders of the two national teachers’ unions came out in opposition to draft legislation to renew the No Child Left Behind law because it contained a proposal to count student test scores in granting incentive pay.

“Indeed, the issue is so sensitive that Ms. Weingarten took great pains yesterday to insist that she did not consider New York City’s new effort to be merit pay. “I think this is a concept that promotes collaboration on a school level,” Ms. Weingarten said. In fact, Ms. Weingarten said, “This shuts the door on the individual merit pay plans that I abhor.”

Whatever one calls it, it will be interesting to see how the NYC-UFT agreement influences negotiations and legislative action on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 which is currently known as NCLB.

It is possible that an agreement on teacher pay bonuses has already been reached behind closed doors by Miller and the nation’s two major teachers’ unions, the NEA and UFT’s parent, the AFT. Whether that is true or not, the New York deal will certainly provide a brand new political context for ongoing work on the Miller-McKeon NCLB reauthorization proposal.