‘As long as it takes’: Los Angeles teachers go on strike in nation’s second-largest system]
Denver took the lead on performance pay for teachers and was followed by several other large city school systems, including Dallas, Orlando and the District. It’s an issue that showed to be a lightning rod for instructor unions, who increasingly oppose performance pay systems. They kept that it was based on procedures that were unreliable and beyond the control of teachers, such as test ratings and metrics that effort to anticipate how efficient instructors are at enhancing test scores.
D.C. Public Schools has one of the most robust performance-pay systems. Adopted in 2009, the system connected teacher evaluations to test ratings and developed a pay structure that provides teachers who are ranked extremely efficient up to $25,000 in bonus offers. But the system stays controversial, with critics suggesting the fixation on data has driven scandals that have rocked the district.
[It was hailed as the national model for school reform. Then the scandals hit.]
The Denver Classroom Educators Association, which represents about 5,700 instructors and other school professionals, has actually been pressing the Colorado school system to invest more in base pay and to cut the reward structure. The union has also looked for to streamline it.
“We’re looking for a fair and reputable pay system that in fact maintains teachers in Denver,” stated Rob Gould, a special-education teacher and lead mediator for the teachers association. “We’ve had a 20 percent turnover in Denver year after year. The district — they have actually been doubling down on these bonuses that are unreliable.”
Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova lamented that union authorities strolled away from the negotiating table Saturday. The strike comes at the end of 15 months of negotiations.
At a news conference Monday, Cordova stated it would be silly for the school system to scrap the perk system — called ProComp — due to the fact that it would imply forfeiting about $33 million that citizens elected to set aside for the program in 2005. She stated the district is working to simplify ProComp so teachers have a better handle on how much money they will make year after year.
“We are working to make it as transparent as possible,” Cordova stated.
The Denver instructors strike follows a year of educator activism that swept the country, illustration instructors out of the classroom from West Virginia to Los Angeles, where instructors were on strike for a week to rally for more class resources. It appears most likely it won’t be the last walkout, with teachers in Oakland, Calif., moving towards a strike.