Frederick M. Hess's Blog
Teachers Approve New DC Contract: Seizing an Opportunity
by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 3, 2010 at 9:38 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Members of the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) officially signed off on the new DC collective bargaining agreement yesterday. More than 75 percent approved of the agreement that the union negotiated with DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee. The final vote was 1,412 to 425 and the agreement now goes to the DC Council for what is expected to be a rapid final approval. I've previously argued that the deal is a good one, delivering crucial improvements in terms of teacher evaluation, assignment, and compensation. It includes a voluntary, big-dollar pay-for-performance system, one in which teachers could make an additional $20,000 to $30,000 per year. The agreement is expensive and less of a radical shift than Rhee's initial vision, but it represents remarkable progress in a city where decades of contracts traded big raises for little or no meaningful change.
Rather than rehash my previous discussion of the agreement, I'll just offer two thoughts here. The first is that buying teacher support for this agreement was not cheap. As Bill Turque pointed out Tuesday in a sharpWashington Post article, the agreement awards teachers a 21.6 percent salary bump through 2010, boosting
