Teachers Exposed

By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2007

A new portal aims to push information about schools and teachers across the nation into the hands of parents and policymakers.

The just launched “Teachers Rules, Roles and Rights” offers data culled from collective bargaining agreements, teacher handbooks, and other resources so users can compare teacher salaries, and other information on the nation’s largest districts. How many times can your child’s teacher call in sick and still get paid? In Dallas, it’s five sick days a year, while Cleveland teachers get 18.

Funded by a $340,000 Gates Foundation grant, the nonprofit National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) started the research project in 2005. “We felt this information needed to be more transparent,” says Kate Walsh, NCTQ’s president. “If we are armed with real knowledge, we will make better decisions.”

Snapshot records by district appear on the site, including, for example, how many students are eligible for a free or reduced lunch. In New York City, 71 percent of students are eligible. In Albuquerque, 26 percent.

Some critics have voiced concern that comparisons, on the length of school days, for example, may hamper unions, when bargaining for teacher raises. Legislators could argue that teachers with shorter workdays can reasonably be paid less. But Walsh says that the site is not anti-union. “In fact, she says, “the AFT [American Federation of Teachers] helped us make this as accurate as possible.”

NCTQ has secured a new grant from the Jacqueline Hume Foundation to fund the addition of data from another 50 districts. That’s a lot of collective bargaining agreements to crunch. “We had paid employees working eight-hour days on this,” says Walsh. “Imagine if you’re a working parent trying to make sense of them.”