School reform in DC

Merit pay’s out, but teacher job security may still take a hit. Here’s The Washington Post on the final round of contract negotiations between DC and the teachers union (via):

Gone, for example, is the two-tiered, “red-and-green” salary plan that garnered Rhee national attention when she unveiled it last summer. It would have paid some teachers as much as $130,000 annually — with help from private foundations — but required them to relinquish tenure protections for a year to qualify for the top pay scale, exposing them to dismissal without possibility of appeal. Gone also, city and union sources say, is Rhee’s attempt to weaken tenure provisions as they are currently written, which grant teachers with at least two years’ experience due-process rights in the event they are fired.