A tentative contract extension for Pittsburgh Public Schools and its teachers’ union has been reached. The contract would run through June 30, 2017, and still requires votes by the union membership and the school board.
As reported in news media, it is not yet clear if the extension keeps in place the pay for performance provisions that were part of the agreement reached in 2010 and expired in 2015. Here are some of the things we wrote on pay for performance over the life of the contract (here, here, here, and here for instance).
It is worth noting that when pay for performance was instituted in the 2010 contract the district administration noted that because of collective bargaining they were putting the decision on pay for performance in the hands of the teachers’ union (the Effective Teachers Plan noted “…while PPS and PFT leadership support the initiatives related to collective bargaining measures here, the PFT membership will be the final voice on these initiatives”). It is not clear where the district or the union stand on the issue at this point, at least publicly.
