So, You Say It's Not a Revolution
It is now official. Yesterday afternoon, the Washington (DC) Teachers Union revealed the vote on DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee's ambitious plan to move toward merit pay for all teachers in the nation's capital. While some suspected the vote would be close (with new teachers voting yes and the many veteran teachers having doubts), it wasn't close at all. The new contract was ratified 1,412 to 425, giving the Rhee agenda a nearly 4:1 win.
The Washington Post's Bill Turque offers us the full story here.
We've come a long way from when Rhee first offered up the plan back in 2007. When the DCPS Chancellor first arrived in Washington nearly three years ago, she was brimming with ideas and innovations. One of them was merit pay, offering huge incentives to teachers who could boost student achievement (as Rhee says she did as a Teach for America teacher in Baltimore two decades ago). At the time, few school districts had been able to truly do merit pay well. In fact, Denver's ProComp program probably stood as the only true exemplar in the field.
The Washington Post's Bill Turque offers us the full story here.
We've come a long way from when Rhee first offered up the plan back in 2007. When the DCPS Chancellor first arrived in Washington nearly three years ago, she was brimming with ideas and innovations. One of them was merit pay, offering huge incentives to teachers who could boost student achievement (as Rhee says she did as a Teach for America teacher in Baltimore two decades ago). At the time, few school districts had been able to truly do merit pay well. In fact, Denver's ProComp program probably stood as the only true exemplar in the field.