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DCPS teachers who supported D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s contract proposal from the beginning have got to be annoyed. On Monday, Rhee announced that the minimum 28 percent across the board raises offered in July now must be trimmed due to the poor economy. The contract negotiations have reached their 15th month. The District will soon submit a revised offer to the Washington Teachers’ Union, which has thus far resisted the contract. Rhee did state that funding from private foundations for the controversial merit pay provisions in the plan have not been affected.
Last week, the WTU offered its own counter-proposal to the contract, although the released summary was vague and said nothing about the merit pay and accountability measures.
Perhaps seeking to clear the air, Rhee’s op-ed in Monday’s Washington Post was conciliatory and appealed directly to teachers. She emphasized that she does “not blame teachers for the low achievement levels”, and claimed that her attitude toward teachers had been misrepresented in the media. To clarify her position on accountability, she added:
Do not misunderstand: I do not believe that most of our teachers are shortchanging their students. But in the worst cases, we have teachers who put their feet on their desks and read the paper while students run around. Or they use corporal punishment. Or they intentionally abuse their current contract, leaving for three months at a time and returning for the one day that will keep their job active. We all agree that these people do not belong in the classroom, and we must be able to remove them expeditiously.
Photo by maxedaperture.
Over at Fordham, Ben Hoffman breaks out the baseball analogy:
For several years, the players’ union did what it could to limit testing and protect steroid users. That was a huge mistake, because in the eyes of the public, all players were suspect, steroid users and those who worked hard and played fair alike… Obviously identifying a bad teacher isn’t quite as cut and dried as identifying a steroid user (but wouldn’t it be great if we could determine who was a bad teacher just by making them pee in a cup?).
We hope there’s more to the WTU counter proposal than the summaries would indicate, and that Rhee’s outreach to teachers (she’s also been hosting small group discussions over the past few weeks) continues. There’s going to need to be some movement from both sides for this to go anywhere. The dragging PR war over the contract is starting to overshadow the real struggles in the schools themselves, and when that happens, nobody wins.
Baby Steps: On Monday, Mayor Fenty and Rhee announced small, but positive gains in the District’s rates of attendance, graduation, and improvement in handling special education caseloads. Are the numbers still pretty pathetic overall? Well yes, but they’re better than last year:
Between 2007 and 2008, DCPS saw a one percent increase in graduation (which roughly translates to 200 more students graduating) and a 16% decrease in absenteeism among students (at the high school level, the figures jump to a 30 percent decrease). According to a release, DCPS has also reduced the number of open special education cases from 1,478 in December 2007 to 885 as of December 31, 2008.
Schools Notes: The number of homeless students in D.C. schools has doubled in the last year… Three more DCPS campuses are slated for closing in Wards Five and Eight, yet Marion Barry doesn’t mind… Jay Mathews makes the case for testing…D.C. places 46th (not last!) in the nation in AP scores, far behind Maryland (1st) and Virginia (3rd).
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I'm pretty sure that's a cock, not a chicken.
I'm talking about the picture, not Fenty or Barry.
of course barry doesn't mind—he has a lot of other things to worry about right now.