Chancellor Rhee Tackles Teacher Seniority

The Washington Post reports that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is taking steps to end teacher seniority preferences in the District's teachers union contract, as part of ongoing contract negotiations with the Washington Teachers' Union. This is an important, and contentious, teacher pay reform that holds promise for reversing inequitable teacher distribution patterns between low- and high-poverty schools in the district.

Within-District Teacher Disparities

Seniority preferences allow teachers with the most experience to transfer to any open teaching position in a district, which means the most experienced teachers tend to gravitate to the lowest-poverty schools and those with with the most ideal teaching conditions. This leaves the highest poverty schools, with the neediest students, with teaching staffs composed largely of rookie teachers.

Within-district teacher quality disparities perpetuate the achievement gap, particularly in large districts like Washington, D.C., which as a heterogeneous mix of schools and students. Higher-income, high-performing schools in the affluent Northwest neighborhoods and Capitol Hill attract the most experienced teachers away from lower-income, low-performing schools in the Northeast.

In addition, these teacher distribution patterns lead to significant spending disparities between schools in the same district. Most teacher contracts determine district-wide salary levels based on teacher experience and education credentials. Thus if one school has ten teachers who have been teaching for 20 years, while another school has ten first-year teachers, the first school is going to receive more money from the district for teacher salaries. That school—likely with higher-income, less challenging students—will have a higher per-pupil expenditure.

"Comparability" provisions in the NCLB law governing federal education funding are supposed to force districts to spend the same amount at their low- and high-poverty schools. However, the provision contains a major loophole that allows districts to disregard inequitable spending on teacher salaries resulting from teacher experience. Last year, Congress discussed closing this loophole and strengthening the comparability provision in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. If this were to happen, many districts would have no choice but to follow Rhee's example and figure out how to alter current teacher distribution and spending patterns.

Rhee's Teacher Contract Proposal

Rhee has decided to address teacher quality disparities head on, without waiting for a federal mandate. She first offered the possibility of differentiated pay reforms for teachers in D.C., but the response to modifying the traditional teacher salary schedule has not been positive, and one union member told the Washington Post that the compensation issue is "not on the table" now.

So Rhee is testing another tack with the union—ending teacher seniority transfers. The objective of such a reform should be to get the best teachers into classrooms with the students who need them the most. Under the plan, Rhee could assign teachers to schools based on factors such as teacher skills and student needs, instead of automatically having to honor the transfer request of an experienced teacher. This isn't going to be an easy sell for the Washington Teacher's Union. Seniority preferences protect the interests of union members and have been enshrined in teacher's contracts for a long, long time. Simply putting the issue on the table is an audacious move.

Rhee has been concentrating on bringing in young talent to D.C. schools, which is a fine objective as long as she implements an effective process for identifying and nurturing that talent. More importantly, she should focus on getting the most developed talent—which often means more experienced teachers—to low-performing schools. Achieving this goal will likely require a portfolio of reforms, including financial inventives to attract skilled teachers to high-poverty schools, and improved working conditions in those schools. But ending seniority transfer preferences is one important step toward achieving that goal.