Even in a perfect world—say, Missouri in the mid-1990’s—enhancing pension benefits for teachers creates winners and losers. A new report on Missouri’s teacher pension system shines a light on just how stark the difference is—and how damaging these changes will be for the teaching profession overall.

From 1995 to 2002, Missouri implemented a series of retroactive benefit enhancements to tContinue Reading »

Well it was a long and troubled birth, and a snowstorm confined the keynote speaker to an electronic feed, but officials in Providence, R.I. on Monday finally launched the groundbreaking non-profit education management organization that will work to turn around the city’s lowest-performing public schools.

United Providence — or UP! — is a novel collaboration between the Providence TeacheContinue Reading »

Conventional wisdom states that when politicians make hard decisions, they’re punished at the polls. But Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island is proving to be the exception to the rule.

In 2011, Raimondo, general treasurer of Rhode Island, spearheaded the painful but necessary public pension reform that Rhode Island passed on November 17, 2011. (Many of those reforms were anticipated in an EducContinue Reading »

People in Washington rarely like to admit they’ve been surprised. “I heard that last week,” they will often say when some bombshell hits the newspaper.

Denizens of think tanks also don’t like surprises. After all, their job is to stay in close touch with what’s happening and what’s on the horizon.

Still, there were some surprises for our WashingContinue Reading »

Following up on my post earlier this week on the tentative agreement in Los Angeles around how to incorporate student growth in teacher evaluations, there at least four more reasons why combining school-level student growth scores and raw test scores in a teacher’s evaluation is a bad idea:

Late last week the Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union (UTLA) reached an agreement on including student test scores in teacher evaluations. The agreement does not include all of the details (UTLA has posted a summary and the full provisions), but it is clear that they will not be using a teacher’s individual value-added score. Instead, they will be using school-level valuContinue Reading »

Illinois can’t seem to stop itself from digging pension holes. Back in September, Chicago settled a two-week-long strike by giving its teachers a 17.6 raise over the next four years while ignoring that its penion fund pays out more in benefits each year than it brings in. On Tuesday, voters statewide rejected a proposed amendment to the constitution that would have raised the threshold foContinue Reading »

Last week, Education Nation closed the summit with interviews from President Obama and Governor Romney. The candidates seemed to agree more than they disagreed—in fact, Brian Williams asked Governor Romney if he would retain Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education for a Romney presidency. Performance pay was one area where President Obama and Governor Romney were closely aligned. “There should beContinue Reading »

As the details continue to emerge from the Chicago teacher’s contract negotiations, one thing that has already been settled is the shape of the teacher salary schedule. Mayor Rahm Emanuel backed down from his plan to create a performance-based compensation system, so the existing step-and-lane salary schedule will continue.  As the Chicago Teachers Union’s summary makes clear, every “step” in tContinue Reading »

I was on vacation last week, so I mostly learned about the Chicago teacher strike from outside the Washington policy bubble. Here’s how the story played: Rahm got his clock cleaned.

The famously profane Mayor of Chicago (who apparently dropped the F-bomb on CTU President Karen Lewis last year), was outmaneuvered. Lewis, elected as part of a slate that ran on a platform promising toContinue Reading »