Dive Brief:
- The Chicago Public Schools’ contract with its teachers union expired Tuesday but talks for a new one have stalled.
- The point of contention, the Chicago Tribune reports, is the city’s teacher evaluation system and the way teachers are ranked and graded.
- Both sides have agreed, broadly speaking, to a one-year contract that would provide little in the way of pay bumps for teachers, but would require the district to continue to pay into a teacher pension fund.
Dive Insight:
At the heart of the teacher evaluation debate in the Chicago contract talks is what will happen to teachers as the district grapples with its disordered financial state and which teachers, if any, could lose jobs.
"Layoffs are looming," Jesse Sharkey, the vice president for the union, said last week, the Chicago Tribune reports. "They provide a real subtext to what's going on here. It's one of the things that we're trying to account for.”
The union has tried to get a deal that would widen the "proficient" band in the evaluation system, which ranks teachers from "unsatisfactory" to "distinguished" based on classroom observations and student performance. Lower ranked teachers would likely be first up for layoffs.