The New Teacher Contract is a very progressive step for Baltimore City public schools. Whereas most aspects of the contract between Baltimore City Teacher's Union and Baltimore City Public Schools will remain the same, the main area of change will be in regard to compensation. In the new contract the compensation will be performance based. This means that the Teacher Evaluation will play a role in teacher salaries. Teachers will be compensated on how they teach, children learn and Achievement Units (AU). Teachers will receive Achievement Units not only for a Proficient Teacher Evaluation but also for approved collaborative site-based work as well as teacher professional development that is demonstrated to increase student learning.
While some believe that this is a huge step forward for Baltimore City, others are extremely hesitant. For the first time, compensation is linked to student achievement. Being able to control the amount of AUs may be dangerous. Certain teachers may attend professional development that may not correlate to their specific content simply to collect AUs. Teacher Evaluations are often based on test scores. While “cheating” becomes a bigger issue in City Schools, it may be risky for test scores to hold even greater importance. How do you think the new contract will play out in regard to standardized testing? Do you think teachers will abuse the AUs accumulation policy? If so, in which ways?
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3 comments:
Honestly, the closer it gets to switching to the new contract the more hesitant I am about whether or not this is going to be successful. In the payscale alone, no one seems to understand what is going on and I think the whole AU system is going to be total chaos. Baltimore City is known for being pretty disorganized and I don't think a lot of teachers think that the system can keep up with the contract. I also see what you're saying about abusing the AU system. I have a feeling people are going to get angry if one thing is counted for an AU and another is not. I'm not sure I have a definitive solution to this problem, but I am a littler concerned about the chaos that is going to take place during the transition period.
My biggest concern with the new teacher contract is the fact that so much of the teacher evaluation will be based on student test scores. I believe that teaching is not the only variable that goes into test scores and parent involvement, IQ, student motivation, and other variables are equally important. Most of these variables are outside of a teachers control and I believe it is unfair to evaluate and pay teachers on test scores that are influenced by so many different factors.
In response to the post about AU's, I do think it will be a grey area and probably a big frustration for many teachers. We don't have the AU menu yet, but I do think when it comes up, there probably will be some upset people who contest what is in and what is not in the AU menu. Once the AU menu is decided upon and implemented, I am scared that getting credit for AU's earned will be hard and many teachers will not be getting paid what they should be.
The closer the new contract gets, the more concerned I am about the first few years of transition. I have called HR on several occasions to try to figure out what the new salary will be for a teacher in my position and I have received 3 different answers. This more than concerned me because if the payscale is up to interpretation I can't even imagine how many arguments there will be over the AU system. I think this next year is going to be a very interesting one...
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