Baltimore Teachers Could Make $100,000, But Are There Strings Attached?

This week, Baltimore's teachers will vote to ratify (or not) the newly negotiated contract with the city. The contract has been hailed as a landmark, a vanguard, you name it. Everyone seems to love it . Why? The new contract allows the city to do what many have been hoping to do for a long time: fire teachers. This is the end of tenure and seniority, the raison d'etre for teachers unions.

The contract's central component is an evaluation system (still in the process of being developed) in which teachers would be judged annually on a combination of their students' performance on state tests, any courses teachers take to improve instruction, and a menu of other less-easily measured areas like classroom instruction itself. Based on that evaluation, teachers will be able to move up a "career ladder" and earn pay increases. Some teachers could make up to $100,000 a year, more than what some principals make. The money is good, but what are the teachers giving up in exchange?

Teachers worry about the lack of job security in this new contract. In the last few days, some Baltimore teachers have been circulating petitions urging their colleagues not to vote for the contract. They say that they would be voting for something that they have not even seen yet, and that there is no research base for the proposed teacher evaluation system.

Critics of these teachers have said they would be hampering innovation if they did not vote for this contract, and that "good" teachers have nothing to fear. The new evaluation system is innovation in the sense that it has not been created yet, but the teachers who say there is no research base for its implementation are correct. There is no example of an evaluation system that has been shown to improve the quality of teaching.

It makes sense to support it from the union's perspective, since they secured a pay raise for members in the worst economy since the 1930's. It makes sense from management's perspective too, since they got the union to agree to something that most unions won't. The small chorus of dissenting teachers is saying that the union should delay the vote -- not to reject the contract, but to take some time to really understand it.  Who could argue with that?

Photo credit: Old Sarge