Editor's note: an updated version of this story appears elsewhere on Crosscut.
All of a sudden, Seattle Public Schools have joined the national parade. In a three-year contract just ratified (Thursday night) by the Seattle Education Association, the teachers' union, Seattle is playing catchup in a few very large steps. After a decade or so of foot-dragging by the union and dithering by the School Board, education reform has arrived, in earnest. And this is a big signal — from the biggest district and the most recalcitrant union — to other districts in the state.
Or almost. The School Board still has to ratify the agreement, which is expected. A school levy has to pass this November, providing funds for the teacher-evaluation reforms. One key reform — dealing with reductions-in-force (RIF) of teachers — didn't get into the new contract. And there is the very discordant note of a union vote of no-confidence in Supt. Maria Goodloe-Johnson, whose toughness in the stretch was instrumental in getting the reform package.
Observers of the closed-door negotiations think that something happened about two weeks ago, after which union negotiators very much got on the reform bandwagon. The district also moved to find common ground.
Here's some context. A year ago, neither union nor school district wanted to face the long-put-off question of how to evaluate teachers meaningfully. The pattern of evaluations is easy to see from many other districts: put in place a system for evaluating effectiveness in teachers, reward the best ones with more pay, help the struggling ones, and show the door to the poorest teachers. In most reform-minded districts, a part of the evaluation of teachers is pegged to how well students of the teacher are performing, as measured by tests and the "value-added" component by the teacher in one year. These tests have lots of problems; there are all kinds of external factors that need to be weighed. It would be easy to punt, waiting for more tests of the tests. But this year a unified board, a broad community coalition, and a determined superintendent were bent on facing up to the issue.
Apparently negotiations went along slowly but well. In early August, the SEA union put its proposal on the table, and it seems to have embraced the philosophy of accountability for teachers, but only in some small pilot programs while more studies took place. It's at this point, according to some necessarily speculative accounts, that Supt. Goodloe Johnson erupted and made the district's aggressive plan public. The SEA cried foul play, tried to make the not-very-popular superintendent the issue, and sought to rally the troops.
It didn't work. Political leaders such as former Mayor Norm Rice and Richard Conlin and Tim Burgess of the city council issued op-eds in support of the district's reform proposal. (Other leaders, like Mayor McGinn, stayed mum.) The national context also put the unions at a disadvantage, with many stories attacking the privileges of public employees. There were also media stories touting Obama's "Race to the Top" program, which rewards districts that embrace reform (charter schools, tying evaluations to student performance, career ladders based on excellent teaching and not just seniority), and showing how far Washington state lags behind.
So negotiating sessions resumed, and the SEA soon largely embraced the district's reform package. In some ways, the package that emerged early this week (just as school is about to resume) went even farther than the district hoped. One example: The district proposed that teachers could voluntarily opt into the new system of evaluating, earning a small bonus and chances at higher pay; those who wanted to stay with the old lock-step system, with pay rising only based on experience and graduate degrees, could do so. Under the new contract, all teachers will be in the new system after three years.
In other ways, the district was forced to take a few steps back from its proposal. Student growth measures will be used to trigger reviews of teachers who might have otherwise gotten good evaluations, rather than as a key part of all evaluations, including decisions to fire poorly performing teachers. The district wanted to limit raises to teachers who volunteer to be part of the new, results-oriented evaluation scheme; instead, all teachers will opt in and all will get (small) raises.
Politically, both sides are able to claim they "won." Practically, a great deal will depend on getting new funding to implement the more robust evaluation programs, and on how well the district implements it and wins trust (or provokes passive resistance). Another factor to watch: How well the reform coalition holds together, keeps up the pressure, and finds new funding.
Reform advocates I've spoken to so far say they are "thrilled." Karen Waters of the Our Schools Coalition, a key group of reform supporters put together over the past year, said, "The agreement is a watershed moment in the history of public education in Seattle, and is an important piece in closing the achievement gap, increasing student learning across the system, and supporting teachers."
These advocates for reform feel the district now has a balanced system of quantitative data and qualitative evaluations by which teachers can know how they are doing, move to improve, or face the music and leave. (In the old system, evaluations barely took place and there were only two levels: satisfactory and unsatisfactory, with reportedly 17 of 3,500 teachers earning an unsatisfactory grade.) There are now ways to reward excellent teaching with more pay (not a lot, at least in this contract, but a start). And the district will now put itself in better graces with voters (two levies coming up), nose-holding funders like the Gates Foundation, and federal grants. Thus the old bargain of rewarding real reform with more funding will have a test at last. (Not so easy in a recession, alas.)
As for the RIF policies, which lays off teachers based on seniority, the current system really angered a lot of parents this past year as excellent young teachers were let go and some dead wood retained. The school district pressed for a reform, where teacher quality would also count in deciding who gets laid off. No dice. Apparently the main problem is state legislation; one source said that even if the Seattle contract had made quality a consideration in RIFs, these state laws would have tied every single decision into legal knots.
Lastly, the no-confidence vote in the Supe. This has been welling up in several schools, unhappy with her militaristic manner and her top-down, unified-curriculum reforms. The district is full of clumsy managers at the top, and it is easy to imagine teachers who might like (or reluctantly accept) the teacher-evaluation reforms but who are deeply and justifiably apprehensive about this superintendent's ability to execute them with skill. Likewise, one can understand how union leaders, having pushed well out in front of their rank and file on this contract, might want to provide a handy target, other than themselves, for venting anger.Whether the near-unanimous vote of no-confidence, which is non-binding but plenty wounding, will make Dr. Goodloe-Johnson more defiant, or more conciliatory is hard to say. Judging by her forceful generalship in negotiating this breakthrough contract, I'd bet on more toughness.
