Today’s lesson comes courtesy of Bernadette Marso, president of the Leominster Education Association in Massachusetts. Her members just voted down, by a 305-47 margin, a five-year, $856,000 grant from the Advanced Placement Training and Award Program. The program, among other things, pays teachers of Advanced Placement courses bonus money “if they successfully recruit more students to take AP courses and if the students perform well on the end-of-the-year AP exam.”
Some district officials and parents complained about the union decision because the bonuses were just one part of the program, which includes professional development and a subsidy to offset the AP exam fee for the students. But the union stood firmly opposed.
“We understand that some people will not understand the vote, but we confronted this from a union perspective,” Marso said. “We have a fair and equitable contract with the district, and to have a third party come in and start paying certain teachers more money than other hard-working teachers goes against what a union is all about.”
It will be interesting to see how the Madison School District’s contract negotiations play out with respect to community 4K partners and other curriculuar issues.
OUTrageous! The UNION mentality is totally offensive to me as a LONG-TIME PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR! The total absence of reasonable and appropriate discrimination among teachers in terms of the quality of their work in the educational process is embarrassing to me.
Shame on the Leominster Education Association in Massachusetts for their CLOSED UNION MIND VOTE!
This is the 21st century! The world is flat, as Thomas Friedman has articulated in his outstanding book. The REAL FUTURE of education is NOT within the school walls/classrooms… those teachers best look at the FUTURE… not back into the past of the 19th and 20th centuries.
SAD! SAD! SAD!