NYC "merit pay"

You will probably here a lot of news chatter about the new teacher contract in NYC that implements a form of merit pay. It is a big story. But check it out. I bet the media gets it all wrong.

The first word I heard about it was this NYTimes article:

Bloomberg Unveils Plan for Merit Pay for Teachers

The Bloomberg administration and the New York City teachers union after months of negotiations announced an agreement today on a performance-pay plan that would give teachers bonuses based largely on the test scores of students at schools with high-poverty populations.

But that article offers few details about what that means. So I went to the UTF blog, EdWise.org, to get the union side of the story. It is the lead article right now:

Landmark Agreement For Pension Benefits And School-Wide Bonuses Bring Professional Gains To NYC Public School Educators

Sure enough, they put an entirely different spin on the contract and the differential pay component. The first thing that jumps out is that the union leads by talking about pension improvements. When they do get around to talking about the pay scheme, they call it a school-wide bonus plan and contrast it with a merit pay scheme:

SCHOOL-WIDE BONUS PLAN

The school wide bonus plan reflects the core belief and principle of the UFT: students achieve when all the educators in a school work together on their behalf. When we foster teamwork and partnership, when educators learn from each other and share their successful educational practices and strategies, the whole school moves forward and students benefit. Unlike individual merit pay plans, which set teacher against teacher in cut-throat competition, school wide bonuses encourage educators to work together and help each other improve instruction for all students.

Frankly, the union provides a lot more concrete information on the agreement than the Times article does. And it really does sound qualitatively different from, and much more workable than, a simple "merit pay" approach. I still have a lot of questions about the metrics to be used, how the eligible schools will be chosen, etc. But this does sound like a good approach to rewarding high performing schools and rewarding teachers who choose to work in needy schools.