"A legislative conference committee came to agreement last night on a much-anticipated bill that would give superintendents extraordinary powers to overhaul failing schools and would double the number of charter school seats in the state’s worst school districts."Both the House and Senate are expected to vote today on the bill, considered to be the biggest change to public education since the 1993 Education Reform Act.
The compromises, negotiated over the last few days and well into last night, represent a major setback for teachers unions that tried to block some of the anticipated changes through heavy lobbying.
Most notably, the final bill will enable superintendents to more easily dismiss teachers and impose some changes in workplace rules at failing schools, to the dismay of teachers unions. But it also calls for expedited arbitration-like processes for unions to contest some of those actions, which teacher unions have been strongly pushing for.
