New Haven Contract = Trojan Horse?
Many people are enamored with the new collective bargaining agreement for teachers in New Haven, Connecticut, but we shouldn’t be too optimistic about reforms in AFT districts spreading to other AFT districts (see Cincinnati performance pay, Toledo peer review, Rochester “living contract,” et al.).
Thomas W. Carroll, president of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability, goes one step further, saying the New Haven contract is “actually loaded with union giveaways that will hamper reform, not advance it.” Carroll is particularly upset with “a bizarre provision that allows the New Haven union to veto work-rule reforms even if 100 percent of the teachers in that school approve of them.”
No desire is quite so unrequited as that for “reform-minded” teachers’ unions. There have been hopeful headlines going back to at least 1985 (if you subscribe to Education Week, check out a letter to the editor I wrote in 2002). If something promising happens, all well and good. But don’t expect it to signal a trend elsewhere.
