Another torpid summer seems to be upon us in the nation’s capital. Congress is trying to leave town and get down to the serious business of getting re-elected. Your friends and colleagues are fleeing for the beach or higher ground. The presidential race is taking the action to the hinterlands.
But while no one’s looking, a two-front war and a series of skirmishes are roiling the Washington Teachers’ Union. The outcome of the battles could spell success or failure for Mayor Adrian Fenty’s crusade to reform D.C.’s schools. It could also revolutionize the way teachers are paid — from coast to coast.
That’s right — revolutionize. I’m talking about merit pay, the words that no sensible Democrat will utter — not even Barack Obama — without suffering whiplash from crashing into the teachers unions.
Playing Che Guevara in this revolution is none other than mild-mannered Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Facing a crucial round of labor negotiations with public school teachers, she has presented WTU members with two options. Details to come in next week’s column, but for now let’s just say that one pegs a teacher’s pay to how well his or her students perform — in tests and in observation. It presents a higher risk of failure but a greater chance for reward — as workers are compensated in the business world.
Unions and pols call such a system performance pay or professional compensation. Let’s call it what it is: merit pay. Rhee is seeking to establish a meritocracy in the D.C. teacher corps. If teachers stay for 15 years and hit the performance marks, their salary could reach $131,000, according to the proposals Rhee has sent to the union.
That’s real money.
Rhee’s proposal presents teachers unions with real problems. Her pitch is both devious and delicious, reasonable and revolutionary. Public schools have been trying to establish merit pay systems for years, but none has succeeded. Rhee could succeed, for a variety of reasons.
First, the WTU is weak and crippled by an internal power struggle. How strong can a local union be when it allows its leader — defrocked President Barbara Bullock — to steal $5 million in dues from 1999 to 2002? How can the WTU present a united front against Rhee when President George Parker is under siege from his disloyal lieutenant, General Vice President Nathan Saunders?
The American Federation of Teachers, parent union for the local WTU, is watching with some trepidation. By its own rules, the local unions are autonomous, and the AFT cannot get involved in bargaining talks. But national representative George Bardenave has attended the information sessions at which Rhee has explained her offer.
“We support any local that asks for assistance,” AFT spokesman George Jackson told me. “Bardenave is part of that support.”
The AFT has attempted to soften its position on what it calls the “traditional salary schedule,” but it “wholeheartedly rejects any pay proposals that resemble the failed merit-pay plans that some have advocated.”
Stay tuned for Armageddon, even in these hot and humid days.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
