(From USA Today, September 2, 2008)
By GREG TOPPO
The ink is barely dry on the official document, which outlines the party's guiding principles, but it shows that in this fall's general election, Democrats will stake out a few positions that unions have long opposed.
Among them: paying teachers more if they raise test scores, teach in "underserved areas" or take on new responsibilities such as mentoring new teachers.
Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers' new president, says she's willing to entertain merit-pay plans. But most union leaders, as well as rank-and-file members, have long resisted, saying teachers would compete for jobs rather than cooperate and share ideas.
Sen. Barack Obama, who supports the "merit pay" idea, earned loud boos last July when he raised the topic of "performance pay" in a speech to the National Education Association (NEA).
"If there's ever going to be a time for change, this is going to be it," says Joe Williams, who heads Democrats for Education Reform, a centrist group with ties to the Obama campaign. He says the new platform has a greater emphasis on educational equity for poor and urban students. "We feel like this is a conversation that Democrats should be in on."
At a series of standing-room-only forums in Denver last week in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention, several urban mayors and educators said union contracts limit their ability to fire bad teachers and move good ones to needy schools. "We have to understand that as Democrats we have been wrong on education, and it's time to get it right," said Newark Mayor Cory Booker. He said unions have pressured him to reject charter schools, vouchers and other ways to broaden urban students' access to better schools.
"Ten years ago, when I started talking about school choice, I was tarred and feathered," he told the crowd. "I literally was brought into a room by one of the union officers. … He threatened me that I would never win in office if I kept talking about school choice and kept talking about charter schools."
John Wilson, executive director of the NEA, says blaming teacher contracts is "naïve" and not particularly visionary. He points out that school systems in Finland and Singapore, two of the world's best, are heavily unionized.
But Adrian Fenty, the Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., said "insane work rules" are turning many reformers against unions. Noting the 500-person crowd at the event, he said: "The local politics is changing fast. If we'd had this meeting four years ago, there would only have been five people here."