Three Seattle schools will be allowed to operate outside of the strictures of Seattle's collective bargaining agreement with teachers. Normally, collective bargaining rules prohibit school managers from assigning teachers to their schools based on their effectiveness and from rewarding them for raising student achievement. See our recently released Policy Brief and Policy Note of Seattle's collective bargaining agreement.
A new Memorandum of Understanding, dated April 20, 2010, between the school district and the union gives school managers some of the tools they need to improve three Seattle schools: Hawthorne Elementary, West Seattle Elementary and Cleveland High.
Teachers at these schools, schools identified as "struggling" and eligible for federal School Improvement Grants, will be evaluated under a new system and held accountable for meeting defined targets for student growth. Teachers who do not meet these targets will be &qu! ot;displaced" from these three schools.
Teachers at the three struggling schools will have to sign a "commitment" document, which include: participation in professional development opportunities, including common planning time, coaching and extra work days; length of school year and school day; competencies for staff; use of new evaluation tool and dual-bar for performance (including use of student growth targets); incentive opportunities.
Teachers at these schools will be able to earn additional money for achieving school-wide growth targets for student performance. This is performance pay, a boundary which teachers union leaders have previously said they would not cross. Three new career development opportunities with additional pay will be created for Demonstrating Teachers, Mentor Teachers and Master Teachers.
These schools will be exempt from taking any "forced placements." This overrides the seniority rules of the collective bargaining agreement.
Teachers in t! hese schools will be exempt from layoffs, again overriding collective bargaining provisions, which determine layoff on the basis of seniority.
This agreement is in effect from April 20, 2010 to August 31, 2013, and contingent on receiving funding from OSPI, which has recently received funding for struggling schools from the federal government.
While the district retains control over performance pay, it is clear from this memorandum that the district and the union are genuinely trying to give school leaders the tools they need to improve instruction. A key recommendation of our education reform plan and of Scott Oki's book Outrageous Learning is to give school leaders the autonomy and tools they need to lead their schools.
The union will insist that these changes cannot be extended to the 94 other schools in the district, as these other schools are not receiving federal School Improvement Grant funding. This is inaccurate. First, there are plenty of current dollars to implement these changes without additional federal funding. Performance pay can be easily implemented within existing resources. Consider that Seattle teachers receive, on average, $15,000 in what is known as Time Responsibility and Incentive (TRI) pay, funded by local levy dollars, which the district controls. Reallocating this resource can be used to fund performance pay for teachers.
Discarding outdated teacher assignment practices requires erasing a few key paragraphs in the collective bargaining agreement. And holding teachers accountable for student learning is a cultural! shift which requires the exercise of will and determination of negotiators to raise student achievement, not money.
This Memorandum of Understanding is a hopeful sign. Let's hope that Seattle's new collective agreement with teachers, which is now being negotiated, allows the assignment of quality teachers and performance pay at all schools in the district, and not just at Hawthorne, West Seattle and Cleveland.