Opinion

A real win for NYC’s schoolkids

Here’s a tale of two schools. One is a public middle school, previously closed down and renamed. The other is a selective-enrollment high school with gleaming, brand-new facilities. One is said to be “failing,” as students and teachers flee it at alarming rates. The other is flooded with applications from both students and teachers. It has the pick of the lot, selecting the best teachers and highest-scoring students, turning away all others.

This duality exists all over New York City and other large urban school districts. It’s bad for teachers and worse for students. It runs counter to the ideals of New York and to the core goals of the teaching profession.

With a new teachers contract agreed upon, the city and the United Federation of Teachers have seized the opportunity to finally alter this shameful tale and attack the problem at its root — the cycle in which some schools become difficult to staff with quality teachers, so their performance suffers and good teachers become even harder to recruit and retain.

Under the new contract deal, the Department of Education will identify and designate these hard-to-staff schools, providing a $5,000 bonus to effective teachers who work there. Recognition and financial support will finally exist for talented educators who choose to take on teaching assignments in some of our most struggling schools.

This is very much in line with a proposal put forth by a diverse team of teachers from Educators 4 Excellence-New York. The E4E Teacher Policy Team met over the course of two months to propose ways the new contract could move our schools in the right direction. One of the most important suggestions was to pay effective teachers more for working in high-needs schools. It’s encouraging to see this proposal included in the final contract deal.

It’s also good that the proposal is aligned with the city’s new, more meaningful teacher-evaluation system, which is meant to provide a more accurate picture of a teacher’s effectiveness. The hard-to-staff bonus will only go to educators who’ve shown they’re making progress with their students — not to those rated “ineffective.” (Instead of a bonus, these teachers need extra support to improve.) This will help ensure that our neediest students receive the most capable teachers.

Financial rewards for good teachers who stay won’t solve all the ills that cripple hard-to-staff schools, but they can help. Studies in Denver and North Carolina have found that paying teachers more to work in high-needs schools reduces turnover, helping schools keep their best educators and avoid the downward spiral of decline. Another study that offered bonuses for the most effective teachers to move to struggling schools directly led to an increase in student achievement.

These incentives are joined in the new contract by a first-of-its-kind career ladder that will provide teachers the chance to take on leadership roles with added compensation and more professional development time to hone their skills. Together, these developments will go a long way toward helping stem the exodus of great educators from our most vulnerable schools.

Many details of the contract remain unclear, but this pact holds promise when it comes to addressing some of the most systemic reasons that half of all educators leave within the first five years of teaching — attrition that is even worse at high-needs schools.

These financial incentives, combined with added feedback and support, will give struggling schools a fighting chance to compete for excellent teachers who might otherwise leave. They’ll give these schools a better shot at finally filling vacant but critical positions.

And they’ll send a powerful message to teachers who’ve been working in hard-to-staff schools for decades: “We — your city, your union, your fellow citizens, your students — we respect you, we appreciate you and we need you.”

By itself, this won’t end the tale of two schools, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Jonathan Schleifer is executive director of Educators 4 Excellence-New York, a teacher-led group that seeks to elevate the voices of classroom teachers in policy debates.