Union prez: Teacher pay tied to performance works

[November 18, 2008]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Performance-based pay is a road many teachers don't want to travel. But the newly elected president of one of the country's largest teachers unions says that in her experience, school-wide bonuses work.

Randi Weingarten, who heads the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, said there is a role for raises based on how well students learn, a position advocated by President-elect Barack Obama.

"If an innovation is collaborative and fair, teachers will embrace it, and it will succeed," Weingarten said in a speech Monday at the National Press Club, her first since her election.

Many teachers dislike the idea. Obama was booed when he mentioned it to members of the larger National Education Association in 2007 and again this year.

Yet teachers unions in some cities have begun to accept performance pay. Weingarten described the teacher pay system in New York City, where school-wide bonuses are based on overall test scores in high-poverty schools. Weingarten, as head of the New York teachers union, negotiated the system last year with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The new system is working, she said: Teachers already are getting bonuses for improving student achievement in 128 of 200 eligible schools.

Weingarten's speech comes as her federation and the larger teachers union, the National Education Association, anticipate a good relationship with the new White House. Both groups were effectively shut out of the administration of President George W. Bush. Bush's first education secretary, Rod Paige, once labeled the NEA "a terrorist organization."

On Monday, Weingarten said that when people attack teachers unions, they are attacking teachers who stay up late to prepare lessons, spend their own money on school equipment, or spend weekends at debate competitions away from their families.

In her speech, Weingarten avoided serious controversy. Though she mentioned the New York system -- and was introduced by Bloomberg -- she said nothing about the thornier issue of pay raises for individual teachers.

Under such a system, pay raises would go to teachers whose students do better on standardized tests, something done in Denver and a few other public school districts.

Obama, too, navigated away from this contentious idea, saying during the campaign that teacher raises should be tied to test scores but not based solely on them. Like Obama, Weingarten argues that performance pay should be negotiated by teachers, not imposed upon them.

As Obama seeks education reforms, "no issue should be off the table," Weingarten said, with just one exception: Her union opposes publicly funded vouchers for parents to send kids to private schools.

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On the Net:

American Federation of Teachers: http://www.aft.org/

National Education Association: http://www.nea.org/

[Associated Press; By LIBBY QUAID]

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