The Effective Teaching for Every Childcampaign gave the new teachers' contract mostly high marks in a report card, but said that it does not provide enough incentives to recruit and keep teachers in hard-to-staff schools.
While progress was made in site selection, teacher standards and evaluations, and tailoring professional development to the needs of specific schools, "we also see a larger missed opportunity," said Lauren Jacobs of the Cross City Campaign for School Reform, a coordinator of the campaign. More should have been done to make these schools more attractive places to work, she said.
At a rally and press conference in front of School District headquarters, about 60 students, parents and teachers gathered to express their opinion on the contract. To express their mixed feelings, they chanted, "Way to go, more to go."
The campaign is urgently concerned about distributing effective and experienced equitably across the system and creating stable staffs at the neediest schools. It gave the contract a D on incentives because: