Michelle Rhee wants to pay teachers in Washington, D.C., close to $131,000 a year--but there's a catch. To make the big bucks, educators will have to sacrifice job security. The D.C. schools chancellor has proposed to establish two pay tiers, red and green. (Good idea.) Green-level teachers would see extra green (initially provided by private organizations such as the Gates Foundation) for ceding their seniority and tenure rights and submitting to yearly evaluations that judge them largely by student test scores. Red-level educators would stick to the single-salary schedule, which rewards experience and not performance but pays less. An unnamed union representative told the Washington Post that teachers will never go for the green: "You may be trading off your future, your tenure, your job security. When you trade that, it seems to me you're not getting much." Not getting much? What about getting an increased sense of professionalism and a much higher salary? The Washington Post reported that the Washington Teachers' Union is open to the idea, which is fantastic, even if their national counterparts are far less agreeable on this point. As for Rhee: nice work, chancellor, yet again.
"Rhee Seeks Tenure-Pay Swap for Teachers," by V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post, July 3, 2008
"Reform With Rewards," Washington Post editorial, July 8, 2008