Archive
December 01, 2009
Rewrite Teachers’ Contract, CPS Told
Cincinnati Public Schools must urgently rewrite major aspects of its teachers' union contract and human resources rules if it hopes to improve student achievement, according to a highly anticipated report to be released today.
The report's potentially controversial recommendations could develop into sticking points during upcoming contract talks between the district and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers.
Summary of The New Teacher Project Report on CPS
If the two sides endorse the suggestions made today by the New Teacher Project, employment conditions for teachers could shift radically in just a few years. Top CPS officials indicated Monday they are taking the report seriously as they prepare to negotiate.
Among the 87-page report's proposals: Making test scores a major determinant in teacher job evaluations, allowing external candidates to compete equally for open teaching jobs with current CPS employees, and expanding principals' power over teachers.
The authors say they would essentially build a new teacher-evaluation system from scratch, one in which objective measures of student success - test results and other indicators - would be the predominant factor in deciding which teachers earn bonuses, get laid off or get tenure.
Today, student performance is only directly tied to compensation at a handful of schools test-piloting a federal program.
CPS Superintendent Mary Ronan praised the report as "bold" and "progressive," and said management will bring its spirit to the negotiating table when talks begin later this month. But she mostly shied away from endorsing detailed proposals in the report.
"I think we're going to bring the big ideas to the table," Ronan said. "But because we're keenly aware that Ohio is a collective bargaining state, we do have to negotiate all the details."
While the report lists dozens of proposed changes to both the teacher contract and internal policies and practices, at the core of the problem is the need for objective, tangible measures of teacher effectiveness, said Daniel Weisberg, the group's vice president for policy.
"The underlying problem for all of this is: We don't measure this stuff," Weisberg said. "Think of Major League Baseball where nobody tracked batting averages: 'Well, I don't know if this guy hits .350 or .150, but he looks pretty good up at the plate.' That's where we're at (with teachers)."
Weisberg said CPS should not be seen as better or worse than other school districts on this front; the problems detailed in today's report are widespread in American education. "It's representative of what we see everywhere," he said.
The report, made available to the Enquirer ahead of today's official release, also calls for CPS and the teachers to negotiate fewer work rules for the so-called "redesign" schools - those city schools where students have fallen short of national and state standards for so long that the district recreates the school staff from scratch.
Ronan reserved her most enthusiastic praise for that idea, saying her use of the redesign concept is limited by the current contract. The union has objected to some measures tried at Mount Airy, Rothenberg and South Avondale schools in their redesign efforts.
"Every single thing you try to change to accelerate academic achievement, you run the risk of grievances and unfair labor practice complaints," Ronan said. "And that's why we feel the 'barrier free zone' is truly the only way to boost student achievement in those struggling schools."
Julie Sellers, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, did not return phone calls on Monday seeking comment.
Authors recommend CPS take that step with every school that fell short of posting one year's worth of education growth in 2008-09, according to Ohio Department of Education standards.
Technically, that would include otherwise well-regarded schools such as Clark Montessori, Dater High School and the School for Creative & Performing Arts, but researcher Susan Sexton said that decision would ideally be made based on several years' data.
CPS must also speed up its annual teacher-assignment process, in which vacancies are filled for the upcoming school year, the report said.
The report's authors recommend a "mutual consent" system in which no teacher is placed into a school without consent from both the teacher and the principal.
Also, CPS should do away with a 10-week window in which current teachers can apply for vacancies before external candidates can be interviewed, the authors said.
The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit organization headquartered in New York City, works around the country to study school district policies and union contracts on teacher hiring, placement and retention. Founded in 1997 by Michelle Rhee, who was named District of Columbia Public Schools chancellor in 2007, it often argues that student achievement is held back because rules that keep districts from placing the best teachers where they're needed most.
Locally, the group's work is paid for by $135,000 in donations from business groups and foundations.
Researchers from the group spent the last three months studying the district, combing through six years of human-resources data and conducting extensive surveys and interviews with both teachers and administrators.
Aware of the potentially incendiary nature of its report, TNTP officials carefully orchestrated its public release. Most CPS employees were not aware of the report's contents until officials from the group briefed them in a closed-door, after-school meeting Monday.
Board member Eve Bolton, herself the longtime president of the Wyoming teachers' union, said the report confirmed what she's always known - that many teachers are very open to innovations in how they're paid and evaluated.
According to the report, a majority of Cincinnati teachers would find individual performance bonuses encouraging and say they have a generally positive relationship with their principal.
"The real challenge to the teachers' union in Cincinnati now is whether they can cross that next hill, and continue, if you will, that tradition and history of being reformers, rather than protectors of the status quo," Bolton said.
Additional Facts
Changing the teaching profession
According to the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit education reform group, Cincinnati Public Schools should seek to fundamentally change the way it recruits, hires, evaluates, trains and places its teachers.
Some of the changes recommended in a report published today include:
• Create a new system to tie teacher evaluations to student performance.
• Allow teachers with high scores on annual evaluations to jump levels in the usual salary-increase scales, and allow teachers with poor scores to be "frozen" on the salary scale.
• Allow lay-offs and reassignments to be based on evaluation ratings.
• Give principals final say over whether bad teachers get placed in an intervention program, and authority to determine whether the teacher has successfully completed the intervention.
