Capping two years of rancorous bargaining, the Washington schools chancellor and the city’s teachers’ union on Wednesday announced an agreement on a tentative contract that would increase teacher salaries, establish a voluntary merit pay system and give the authorities clearer powers to move teachers out of the system based on their effectiveness rather than seniority.
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington public schools.
The agreement has yet to be ratified by union members and the City Council.
Throughout the negotiations, an intense media spotlight focused on a union famous for corruption in a city with many failing schools, and on the chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who appeared early in the talks on the cover of Timemagazine, wielding a broom to dramatize her pledge to sweep away recalcitrant teachers and the tenure system.
The tentative settlement includes some novel provisions, like partial financing by private foundations, but experts were divided about how profoundly they would change the district’s school system.
“Just modestly innovative” was the way Allan R. Odden, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who followed the talks closely, described the settlement. He said it would leave intact both
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