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Ever since her arrival in Washington, Rhee has had to do battle with the WTU and the AFT. Her first struggle came when she tried to trim the overstuffed bureaucracy at the central office; ignoring complaints by public sector unions, Rhee cut hundreds of nonteaching positions and was praised by parents for cutting into the bureaucratic morass that was D.C.’s central office, saving millions of dollars and streamlining operations.
Her next task was more monumental: Renegotiate the WTU’s contract in a way that would undermine the inefficient practice of promoting and firing educators based solely on seniority and would also install a regime of accountability through student testing. Negotiations stalled in 2008 when WTU president George Parker accused Rhee of proposing a contract that “would unfairly deprive teachers of due process rights and expose them to arbitrary firing by principals.” In a robocall that went out to teachers, Parker added that “the Washington Teachers’ Union negotiations team is very aware that our members are extremely concerned about their seniority and tenure rights.”
What Rhee’s contract actually proposed was a regime that would catapult teacher pay into the stratosphere: The average teacher would see a $10,000 bonus, a 22 percent raise, an average salary of $81,000, and the possibility of earning more than $140,000 a year for more senior teachers. For this massive bump in pay, all Rhee was asking for was slightly more accountability and the ability to promote teachers based on how well they performed instead of how long they had been on the job.
Individual teachers obviously understood how good of a deal this was. When the union leadership finally allowed their members to vote on the new contract it passed 1,412 to 425.
However, when it was announced that 241 teachers would be let go as a result of the new evaluation system the WTU had just agreed to, the union resumed its pattern of obstruction. They have threatened the city with a class-action lawsuit that would stop the firings from taking place and keep “ineffective” educators in front of chalkboards. As Kristin Ehrgood, the president of the pro-education reform Flamboyan Foundation, put it in an op-ed for The Washington Post, “the union demonstrates that when hard decisions have to be made, it will continue to put adults' interests ahead of children's.”
The simple fact of the matter is that the Washington Teachers’ Union is dedicated to preserving the jobs of its worst members and has no interest in reforms that will improve the lives and the education of our children.
