I don’t understand all the details of the deal reached by the Newark Teachers Union and the Christie administration. The final details were hammered out by Randi Weingarten, NTU president Joseph Del Grosso, Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson, Acting State Commissioner Chris Cerf, and perhaps Governor Chris Christie as well.
Some people (and I include myself) worry that the deal includes merit pay tied to “performance” (test scores). I don’t think that is ever a good idea. It produces perverse incentives for cheating, narrowing the curriculum, and gaming the system.
But the odd thing about this agreement is that there is so much money for almost every one of Newark’s 3,100 teachers. There are retroactive raises; there are bonuses for working in low-performing schools; there are bonuses for working in high-need subjects like math, science and special education. There’s lots and lots of money, enough for all, and in addition, there is peer review added in at almost every stage.
A big chunk of the financing is coming from private sources, including Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to Newark.
Nothing about layoffs; nothing about firing the teachers whose students left for Newark’s rapidly multiplying charter schools.
I am beginning to wonder if Randi and Joe walked away with Governor Christie’s shirt and trousers and he didn’t even notice.
To keep this act going, Mark Zuckerberg better pony up another $100 million for other districts.
More such “victories” like this for Christie and Cerf, and the teachers of New Jersey will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This also begs the question – will the money available for bonus payment determine the number of highly effective teachers, or will the number of highly effective teachers max out the pool?
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Exactly. Where is the money for “merit pay” going to come from when Zuckerburg’s $100 million runs out? Our “Race to the Top” grant in Miami will run out in 2 years. It is written into Florida’s “performance pay” law that bonuses do not have to be paid if funds are not available. Gee, I wonder how that will work for teachers?
I think Randi and the other union leaders who collaborate on these merit pay deals on behalf of teachers need to first create a merit pay plan for themselves. It’s very easy for union leaders to agree on merit pay plans for teachers when their six digit salaries are safe and secure.
I can tell you her deals come with a lot of fine print that doesn’t come to light until everything is signed. Watch your back!!!
Randi should be exposed for what she is–a mole for the privatizers.
Randi Weingarten has been heavily involved with the Broad Foundation for ten years. She collaborated with Michelle Rhee (who is on the Board of the Broad Foundation) with one of the first merit pay schemes.
Broad Foundation Re-Focuses, Changes Leadership
from Education Week – July 22, 2010
“Another area where the foundation will put more emphasis is in building linkages with reform-minded union leaders, as it did in the District of Columbia, DiBiase said. The Broad Foundation has committed $10 million to help pay for the performance elements of the new contract negotiated by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2010/07/broad_foundation_re-focuses_ch.html
Kafkateach,
I agree about the union’s support of merit pay. It bothers me tremendously that they endorse merit pay. This has already hurt them here in Douglas County. I don’t get why the national union supports merit pay.
The national unions support merit pay because Obama wants it and they are too cozy with Obama. When Bush was in office, the national unions fought merit pay tooth and nail.
Something’s rotten, but not in the state of Denmark. I’m very suspicious about the hows and whys of all this money suddenly being available, when everything that’s been done to education has been in the name of budget cuts – “we simply don’t have the money”, they always protest. Sort of like how Rahm didn’t have the money to give teachers their contractual raises, but he has millions to open new charters. So now that the union has agreed to “merit pay”, all the money that was never there is suddenly available?
I don’t know, maybe it’s a good deal, but if I were a Newark union member, I’d be counting my arms, legs, fingers and toes to make sure they were all still there – these “bonuses” don’t come without cost.
My thoughts exactly. The empty coffers are suddenly full when it suits them.
I actually do not believe you can say that the “union” has agreed to merit pay. The union is its members and the members agree to ratify the contract or not. It’s really important that everyone understand that Randi Weingarten is not the union.
I have been around for a lot of years. I have seen the unions at their strongest and now at their weakest. The union of the past used to believe what the members believe. Their philosophies weree identical, because they were former teachers & experienced the day to day positives and negatives of the school day. When they moved up to the administrative side of education,they are no longer in the shoes of the teacher anymore. They have changed, As time goes on, they become a little de sensitized because they forget about the “whinings” of the classroom! This is human nature. (We tend to forget the aggravations that at one time were bothersome to us!)
Things have changed now with these new reforms. Big time money is now entering the picture with ALEC-based education laws trying to be established.
Many of the rank and file have a different viewpoint than their leadership because they are now working under conditions that should not be existing because there are no studies to show the ideas work. However many working teachers are afraid to express it to the union leadership because if they need the leadership to support them for a grievance, they are afraid the union rep people will throw them under the bus. This is the reality of it. I have seen it first hand.
I was in a union that did not alway listen to the dues-paying leadership as time went on and especially when talk of the new evaluation tool, especially putting high stakes testing as 51% of the teacher’s evaluation– was the topic of the day in my state’s union.The union president of the capital city went as far as supporting Race to the Top when the rank and file and the rest of the state’s AFT members did not want it in our state. But the union leaders at the top felt the rank and file don’t know any better and that’s why they got elected. and thus supported the commissioner application Now we have the 75 million from RaceTTTp but we now have chraters, and teacher evals connected to high stakes testing and pretty soon the ALEC policies will be setting in.
Unions have changed. Those at the top forget they were teachers. They do not have the same thoughts as those in the classroom any more, They see things from a different perspective. They forget their roots. They are desensitized and don’t know it or don’t care. When you are removed from the day to day tribulations of the classroom, you slowly become detached to what teachers go through. I have seen it upfront and personal! I do not believe MS Weingartenb shouold have gotten involved in the New Jersy Contract negotiations…..It is a contract where the union leaders on top use “money” to bribe the teachers in accepting it…The mone from Zuckerman will be the apple on that Garden of Eden Tree…Once yo bite it, you will become a pawn in the new reform movement of charters, privatization scams and for what? Don’t sell out like Judas for 30 pieces of silver…Demand from your leaders that your own people, your own union reprersentatives negotiate with the other side. Listen to what Jersey Jazzman has to say. DOn;t be afraid of saying no to the contract. Merit pay should not even be on the table….Weingarten is throwing teachers under the bus under the guise of more money in your paycheck. And what happens when the money runs out? You have nothing but the mandates of what the money has bought for Gov Christie and his billionaire free enterprise charter school friends…
Ask yourself, is this the reason you became a teacher…for more money in your paycheck regardless of how you have to teach your students? Grow some backbone and vote your conscience.
Amen to that.
I have been around for a lot of years, myself. I grew up in a household with a father who belonged to two professional unions, as well, so my union experience has almost as many years as I have on this earth. I have been a card-carrying union member from age 17. My experiences as a member of the two state teachers unions, under whose local contracts I have worked, has been nothing short of positive. Keep in mind that I never belonged to any of the AFT locals. From all reports, you either have a strong local or you have a weak one. Despite the amazing fight out forth from the CTU, I have been unimpressed with the AFT organizations country-wide. However, it’s very dangerous to paint every teachers union, whether national, state, or local with the same brush as I know that there are plenty of weak NEA locals around.
The most important thing to remember is that a union is its membership. If your leadership becomes the union for you, work on getting better leaders. The absolute worst thing that any union member can do is turn his back on the organization. The way things are going these days, the union will be the only thing left for you when you have no where else to turn. The situations in some of the major cities of our country (NY, New Orleans, etc.) are tragic. The state of Wisconsin stood up to Walker, and although the recall was unsuccessful, the fight isn’t over yet. It’s going to be a long haul, but Wisconsin should never give up. Chicago rose up and fought and came to a better compromise. They were able to get leadership in there to finally address abysmal conditions. That’s the way to stand with your members.
Newark can make history one of two ways: 1) Bending to the whims of “reformers” who tout merit pay thus paving the way for all of New Jersey to succumb to it or 2) Upholding the tenets of common sense that says merit pay does nothing to increase success in schools. All eyes are on Newark this week both in the state and throughout our country.
If any teacher does not think this is an important issue to watch, practice saying this mantra to yourself: “…and then they came for me.”
I am a Newark teacher and I don’t understand all the details of the deal. Yet. Hopefully all the questions we have will be answered in the coming week.
What I know to be true is that we have been without a contract since June 2010. We have not seen a raise or even a step increase since then. (This goes against the last contract that says they have to follow the old till we have a new.) My new salary will be THE SAME AS THE OLD !!! So I have already worked for three years on step 13 and now will not reach step 16 for another two years. They are not jumping us to where we should be just moving us along one step.
As for merit pay, it is frightening. I am not entirely sure how it will work but what has been said is not reassuring. It is up to the Principal and your evaluation. I am truly afraid that my colleagues will be distracted by the sometimes large retro money (it’s a percentage) and just agree. We have been struggling through these last years and contributing more each year to health care (7% in each of the next 4 years) and more to pension. The retro money is what they should have been paying us all along!! But now they don’t have enough to give it to us. WHERE did it go?
There is nothing in the contract about working extra hours or a limit on the paperwork or even increasing our preps so we can have one planning period each day. There is nothing about adhering to the class size laws, which does not happen. (Third grades with over 30 students.) It has not addressed any of these quality-of-life type issues.
I am one of those who would be getting the largest retro check, however, I still will vote no. Merit pay is dangerous and not the same as actually getting the money that was promised to you.
I have always believed, if something is too good to be true, it usually is…
Chris Christie is too shady a character to not have an ulterior motive…unless
he wants to play nice now because in 4 years he wants to run for President!
Nah, that can’t be it!
All I can say is watch your back and read each page carefully. In DC, my colleagues voted for the money. Many never got a chance to collect those big checks. So, watch yourselves Newarkians – just watch yourself.
My thinking — as an outsider admittedly — is that big bonuses might work if there are mass lay-offs of teachers.
There is a plan underway to scale up Rocketship Education charter management operator’s software so that kids in regular public schools, not just charters, will be put into very large class sizes where they can drill themselves in reading and math, about 50 min per subject each day. Classroom monitors will replace teachers and report into one master teacher. The ideal ratio CPS’ Brizard told principals last fall was 6 monitors to one master teacher. By spring, 44% or 341 principals had left CPS.
I believe Randi sold out the teachers. Merit pay is not what grassroot teachers support. Classroom teachers will tell you they don’t believe in the idea of merit pay or evals with high stakes testing scores attached; they will tell you they are against charters and online schools; they are against ALEC being involved with education policies and are against parent trigger laws.
There is becoming a chasm…a hole…a disconnect between what the rank and file teachers on the ground believe and what Randi Weingarten and those in management positions like hers in the states (superintendents-some union leaders) believe…
IS it because they are out of the classroom and see that it is better to give money to teachers and shut them up with a bigger paycheck and give up on your education philosophy and ideals? She seems to be out of touch as to what the teachers in the classroom are saying. Like any politician, when you become powerful you change how you think. You begin to give up some of your ideals in trade offs…and money is the almighty trade off, isn’t it?
IS this the new AFT thinking?
Give the teachers money…like give treats to a dog and they won’t mind merit pay and high stakes testing…Just pay them for it..
That’s a sell out in my book…..
And God knows what else will be given up that teachers fought for years ago on thse picket lines and
protests? I hope tecahers stick to their real reasons fpr becomoing teachers and not let “money” be their god.
For when the money runs out, and it will, you will have nothing left but what the politicians and deal makers like Weingarten give you..I hope the New Jersey teachers realize this when they make their decision as to whether or not to accept their contract proposal. Don’t let the money jade your ideals of what the reformers like Christie, Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush, Joel Klein, the Chiefs for Change commissioners and leaders, the TFA advocates, and billionaires Gates, Bloomberg, Merdock, Sam Walton, Eli Broad, Jindal, and others are tempting you to do.
Remember, from day one, teachers went into the field of education. not for the money but for ideals… Don’t give your ideals up to those who want to replace you with new recruits who are there for the $$$….