Meet the Teachers' Union Contract of the Future
On Friday Geoff Decker of GothamSchools reported on the renegotiated contract between New York's United Federation of Teachers and Green Dot, the California-based charter school operator whose schools are all unionized. Two years after the first Green Dot/UFT agreement was drafted, the union agreed once again to a contract that totally lacks both tenure and seniority-based layoffs. The new contract also pays veteran Green Dot teachers a $2,000 bonus as a reward for raising test scores.
Green Dot administrators must prove only "just cause" before firing a teacher--the same standard practiced within many non-unionized companies in order to avoid wrongful termination lawsuits. First-year teachers have no job security protections whatsoever, and all teachers will be evaluated according to the principles enshrined in New York State's Race to the Top application: 20 percent of the evaluation score will be based on student
