Understanding Teachers Contracts

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Whether it's the contentious multi-year negotiations over the teachers contract in Washington, D.C., or the debates in many states over competing for Race to the Top funds, teachers contracts are at the center of the education reform debate today. Once of interest only to education insiders, contract issues and calls for reform are now widespread.

But often, the public has no idea what a typical teachers contract looks like. Even though contracts are public documents, most are not easily found on the Web sites of school districts or teachers unions. Newspapers and local media do not ordinarily publish them (and often offer only cursory coverage of the issues being discussed during collective bargaining negotiations). Meanwhile, those negotiations are often held out of public view, and the deals cut late at night. The documents themselves can be cumbersome, lawyerly, heavily influenced by side agreements and addendums, and generally hard for non-experts to figure out.

A new Education Sector explainer, Understanding Teachers Contracts seeks to bring greater transparency and understanding to the issue of teacher contracts. The interactive explainer offers a side-by-side comparison of common provisions found in contracts. It points out the differences and similarities of two contracts along key dimensions, such as teacher pay, evaluation, the rights of the teachers union, and teacher transfers. It also includes a short, interactive quiz to enable readers to see where they personally fit into the major contours of the debate about teachers contracts today.

The two contracts illustrated are the contract between the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) in Southern California and the San Diego Education Association, which was ratified in 2006 (a traditional contract), and an early contract used by Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles. The Green Dot contract is an example of what is sometimes called a "thin" contract—that is, it is silent on many issues that are covered in the more traditional SDUSD contract.