When you think of urban districts that are setting trends and getting the attention of other districts around the nation, you probably think of Chicago, Washington, D.C., and recent award winning districts like Atlanta and Aldine, Texas. Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal ran an article that discusses a groundbreaking change in New Haven (a CUBE district, by the way). What they did was change the way teachers can be evaluated, and loosened the protections for bad teachers, two things that teachers unions are often criticized over. The change from the teachers unions is big news for many urban districts, and two quotes in particular caught BoardBuzz’s attention.
“I rarely say that something is a model or a template for something else, but this is both,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who helped broker the New Haven deal.
“This shows a willingness to go into areas that used to be seen as untouchable,” [Arne] Duncan said.
So if New Haven, with an enrollment of 20,000 students, and more than 80 percent minority student population, can make a drastic change to the structure of the teacher contract, can other unionized school systems do the same? It’s one of those questions that time will have to answer. Education Secretary Arne Duncan speaks to the union leaders often, and at the NEA convention this summer he was booed when he mentioned merit pay for teachers saying, “you can boo, just don’t throw shoes.” (He made a similar joke at NSBA’s Annual Conference in the spring when discussing mayoral control in school districts (time for a new speech writer?)).
So perhaps news from New Haven is good for the students there who may be taught by “bad” teachers, and now administrators have more options to move them out of the classroom. If the outcome is as good as the expectations, it will be worth repeating in other urban districts.
