If you’re not already familiar with the way teachers in D.C. get paid, it basically works like this – the longer you teach, the more you make. DCPS teachers are compensated on a seniority-based scale (pdf), something that was designed to encourage retention, but unfortunately also means that teachers are paid for their loyalty, not their performance.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has often said that she wants the District to have “the most highly compensated and competent” teachers in the country, and now, in a move being simultaneously praised as “revolutionary” among reformers and reviled as “a bribe” by critics, she has proposed a new contract that would give teachers an opportunity to earn over $100,000 a year in exchange for giving up their rights to seniority and tenure.

Teachers who choose to join the “green” tier under the new contract would be eligible for thousands of dollars in bonuses and raises (funded by groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) for meeting student achievement goals, but would also be subject to yearly performance reviews –that is, more money for more accountability. If teachers want to hang on to their traditional pay scale and tenure, they simply opt out of the new plan and stay in the “red” tier.