Activist group sees flaws in teachers' contract

Philadelphia's new teachers contract gets high marks from education activists - but the praise isn't universal.

The Effective Teaching Campaign gave the pact a D for not offering sufficient incentives to attract and keep teachers at tough schools. At a news conference held outside the Philadelphia School District headquarters yesterday, the activist group also blasted the contract for not including students in decision-making.

Effective Teaching Campaign, a coalition of 25 local organizations including the NAACP, ACORN, the Education Law Center, and the Philadelphia Student Union, awarded the teachers contract an A-minus for standards and evaluations, a B for professional development, and a B-plus for the so-called site selection program. Under it, principals and leadership teams fill teacher vacancies, rather than having positions filled by seniority.

Campaign coordinator Lauren Jacobs, who is with the Philadelphia Cross City Campaign for School Reform, said she saw "a huge missed opportunity to strengthen the incentives to get and keep teachers at struggling schools."

The new pact gives additional pay to teachers in some low-performing schools, but it requires them to teach an extra hour during the school day and potentially some Saturdays. It also gives tuition assistance to teachers in struggling schools who are earning their master's degree.

But that's not enough, the group said. It wanted incentive grants for those schools to attract teachers.

The group also wants students to have a say in schools where teacher vacancies are filled by a committee of principal and staff.

"The committee needs to have students on it, because we are the ones that have to be in the classroom with the teacher the committee chooses," said Shania Morris, an eighth grader at Huey Middle School.

Hye-Won Gehring, a teacher at Bartram High, said that she liked much of what she saw in the contract, but that she believed the real work still lay ahead.

"As always with promises, initiatives, and new programs instituted by the district, the devil is in the details," Gehring said. "What is this going to look like for teachers and students?"

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said he thought the grades were too low, particularly in the area of incentives.

"This contract goes a long way to deal with that issue," Jordan said in an interview last night. In addition to the tuition benefits, the contract also lets teachers who transfer to high-needs schools keep their building seniority, something that wasn't previously possible.

Earlier, in a meeting with The Inquirer's editorial board, Jordan said he believed that a new peer assistance and review system - based on ones already in place in Toledo, Ohio, and Montgomery County, Md. - would provide "the kind of support, coaching, and mentoring by experienced teachers . . . so that we will be able to turn around the tide of the turnover of new teachers."

Now, he said, half of the Philadelphia's new teachers leave in five years and a third leave in three.

Jordan also said last night that the contract contained a vehicle for students to be heard. If a principal chooses, high school site selection committees can contain a student. Alternately, the principal can pick an assistant principal to be on the committee.

The three-year contract was ratified by teachers last week and is expected to be approved by the School Reform Commission today.

As the Effective Teaching Campaign held their news conference, a small group of teachers marched nearby, protesting a proposal to radically reform a group of city schools. Those schools, which the district has termed "Renaissance schools," will be announced this afternoon.

Michael Roth, a history teacher at Edison High, said teachers would not want to work at the turnaround schools, which are to be overhauled beginning this fall.

Renaissance schools could be turned into charters, run by outside managers, universities, or others, like current principals or teachers, who apply to do so.

At the district-run schools, staffs will be vacated, with just 50 percent eligible to be rehired. At schools run by charters or outside groups, all the current staff could lose their current positions.

Longer school days and years could result. That will turn off some, such as teachers with young families who can't give up more time, Roth said.

"A lot of teachers who really care about the kids are going to leave," said Roth.

New management isn't going to affect some core issues that plague the lowest performers, he said.

"Just because you create a new school, it's not automatically going to make them proficient," said Roth. "They're not automatically going to stop cutting and fighting."

The district will name 12 schools eligible to become Renaissance Schools. Of those, an undetermined number will be chosen in March.