By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

BOSTON – The Boston School Department settled a long-running contract dispute with the Boston Teachers Union this week that incorporates student test scores into teacher evaluations in exchange for increased employee quotas at certain schools, according to media reports.

“The agreement also ends the practice of automatic annual pay raises for all teachers, and mandates teachers who fail reviews not receive a pay raise until they show improvement. Those who show no signs of improvement could face early termination,” the Huffington Post reports.

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The proposed six-year contract, which would be retroactive to the expiration of the last contract in 2010, must still be approved by BTU members and the School Committee, and the City Council would also have to approve funding for the agreement.

The contract “would provide what the two sides called a 12 percent cost-of-living increase during six years, at a projected cost of no more than $136 million,” the Boston Globe reports.

If approved and funded, the contract would also reduce class sizes (and increase the number of employees needed) at underperforming schools, and increase the number of  nurses, social workers and special education assistants, the Huffington Post reports.

While city, school and union officials gushed over the agreement, critics told the Globe they were disappointed district negotiators abandoned the goal of adding 45 minutes of instruction to the school day.

Education reformers also complained that “It also does not dump pre-existing ‘bumping’ rules that require administrators to find spots for all existing teachers, often at the expense of young teachers losing their jobs,” according to the Post.

“This is a six-year contract with no progress on longer school days, and the evaluation standards for teachers are at the bare minimum requirements,” city councilor John Connolly, chairman of the city council’s education committee, told the Globe. “This is not how you close the achievement gap and attract middle-class families into an urban system.”

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Connolly called the contract “a half step forward” at best.

Others said the contract may likely be the best deal district officials could negotiate within the confines of collective bargaining. Paul Grogan, president of the charitable Boston Foundation, “noted the biggest change, overhauling teacher evaluation, was mandated by the state.”

“The city may have done as well as they possibly could,” Grogan told the Globe. “Fastening our hopes for dramatic changes on the collective bargaining process is a vain pursuit.”