In 2000/2001, I had tried to bring a resolution at the Delegate Assembly calling for the UFT to reject all forms of merit pay. Suddenly, after years of being able to get the floor Weingarten avoided calling on me for months.
It was the way she handled this issue – by refusing to have an open discussion in the union – along with her support for mayoral control that led me to lose faith in her as a union leader and ultimately took me from trying to convince her to move the UFT in a more progressive direction (I had naively thought she would take the union in a positive direction up to that point) to putting me in opposition mode, leading to the formation of ICE in November 2003.
I posted 3 articles Ed Notes ran in April 2001 on merit pay on the Norm's Notes blog here.
ICE original core members Paul Baizerman and Vera Pavone wrote the first two.
The third, "Weingarten Heads AFT Task Force Recommending Merit Pay" includes excerpts from the Feb. 12 edition of Education Week : AFT To Urge Locals To Consider New Pay Strategies. Weingarten sent an email to Ed Notes saying this was a very mild version of merit pay and sent me the report. There is no mild version of merit pay.
Ed Note: Make sure to check out the post below this where teachers sent in their arguments against merit pay for their schools and one teacher outlines how his school rejected the plan.
3 comments:
What if you accept the merit pay, then have someone spin a big wheel, and whatever name comes up gets all of it? Maybe you could do that in lieu of one of those awful meetings.
Or we could play Price is Right. Bob Barker would come out of retirement for this gig.
Plus you'd have a shot at some real money instead of three grand before taxes.
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