Where will the next mayor take the city’s public schools? The candidates have said as little as possible on the subject. But recent news in two other cities reveals the possibilities.
Teachers in Newark just OK’d one of the nation’s most progressive collective-bargaining agreements. It rewards great teaching and treats educators as true professionals, whose effectiveness in the classroom makes a big difference in the futures of their students.
It’s the first contract in New Jersey to reward highly effective teachers — particularly those teaching hard-to-staff subjects or serving in high-needs schools — with higher pay, and the first to end the traditional system of compensation in which longevity alone determines salary increases. It puts “merit pay” in its proper context: not as a driver of test scores, but as a tool to focus limited resources on our most valuable teachers, so that they stay in the classroom.
All this builds on landmark reforms that New Jersey’s Legislature passed earlier this year, ultimately supported by the state teachers union, including an end to universal and automatic tenure. The longtime president of the Newark teachers union, Joe Del Grosso, called the contract “a step in the right direction for the teaching profession.”
American Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten was instrumental in brokering the agreement. That means the AFT — and its affiliates, such as New York’s United Federation of Teachers — can no longer treat automatic tenure and lockstep longevity pay as sacred cows in future contract negotiations, such as the ones our next mayor will face early on.
The progress in Newark stands in stark contrast to the backward steps taken in the nation’s third-largest school district, Chicago.
Reeling from a bitter teachers strike, Windy City school officials just announced that, starting next year, the district would put a moratorium on closing failing schools. Not because they’ve eliminated failing schools, of course — but rather because school closings cause “unnecessary disruptions to students, parents and schools.”
Disruptions? What about the unconscionable failure to educate children that will persist in many of the schools that will now stay open?
The reality: Opposition wore down Chicago’s leaders, and they’re suing for peace.
The fact is, the status quo in most urban school systems — Newark, Chicago and, yes, New York City — needs disrupting.
It’s begun to happen here over the last decade:
* By dismantling the chokehold that the central school bureaucracy — and its outposts in 32 districts across the five boroughs — had maintained on schools (and ending seniority-based assignment of teachers to schools), the city empowered principals to do their jobs and put more dollars into the classroom.
* By shining a spotlight on student performance, New York empowered parents with information and ensured that schools that fail their students are no longer allowed to keep doing so year after year.
* Families now have real choices about where to send their kids, including 600 new schools (mostly district, some charters).
As a result, achievement and graduation rates are up after decades of stagnation. And for the first time, we’re having a serious conversation about what it takes to ensure that our graduates are ready for college or a career — an area where there’s still enormous work to do.
This effort hasn’t been perfect, and it sure hasn’t been without controversy, but the reforms of the last decade have driven real progress. Yet the folks who oppose them have done a good job at harnessing the anger felt by many (understandably and rightly) about the failures that persist, and turning that anger against the reformers.
Of course, the opponents of reform never mention where we started — the sad legacy of the days when they ruled the roost.
When the mayoral candidates speak about education, they talk about collaboration and conciliation. Understandably, they avoid topics like teacher quality, school choice and governance issues — issues that matter, and so engender entrenched opposition.
Collaboration and conciliation are real virtues — they helped win the day in Newark. But Chicago shows how conciliation can be a euphemism for unprincipled concession. That was the case for a long time in our city, where political accommodation mattered far more than results for kids. We can’t go back.
New York City needs a leader with a bold vision for continuing the momentum our schools have begun to gather, and a fighting spirit to see the vision through. In dealing with stakeholders, she or he will have to build consensus wherever possible, but not govern merely on the basis of polls, politics or press conferences.
Otherwise, our next mayor will have the dubious distinction of having led New York to become a second-class city on this most important of issues, our children’s education.
Micah C. Lasher is the executive director of StudentsFirstNY.