Education

Baltimore teachers voted down a contract negotiated by the local AFT affiliate back in 2010, a contract that agreed to base 50% of evaluations upon test scores, got rid of salary steps and added merit pay provisions. The contract was praised by AFT President Randi Weingarten as a model, innovative contract...

Weingarten was embarrassed when the contract was rejected by a 1,540 to 1,107 vote, so she did what she does best - worked behind the scenes to make sure reformers got their model, innovative contract... (and they did.)

Weingarten took a bow for getting that contract voted through the second time around and then moved on to reform efforts elsewhere, her sell-out work in Baltimore done.

And how did that "innovative" contract work out in Baltimore?

Not so well:

A significant number of Baltimore teachers — in some schools as many as 60 percent of the staff — have received unsatisfactory ratings on their midyear evaluations as the system moves to implement a pay-for-performance contract that's considered a bellwether for a national movement.

Teachers contend that the high number of "performance improvement plans," which can be a precursor for dismissal, is an attempt to avoid paying raises. But city school officials say that putting teachers on such plans is part of broader efforts to help them become more effective in the classroom....

Have you got it now? They're not out to give merit pay raises to everybody in the system. They're out to fire as many as they can, hand out as few salary increases as possible and overall use the new evaluation laws to bludgeon teachers into submission.

http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/

"Where is Randi standing up for the 60% of Baltimore teachers getting "u-rated" and put on the list to be fired? I'll tell you where she is - she's nowhere to be found in Baltimore and is rather lurking around in New Jersey where she's doing the reformers' work on this Newark contract."