The Bloomberg administration and the New York City teachers union after months of negotiations announced an agreement today on a performance-pay plan that would give teachers bonuses based largely on the test scores of students at schools with high-poverty populations. The plan, which will be phased in, is a major breakthrough for Mayor Michael R. . Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who for years have called for a merit pay system in which high-performing teachers can earn extra money.
At the same time, the administration gave the union the city’s support for state legislation to allow city teachers to retire five years earlier with full pension benefits. And the city agreed to pay $160 million to settle a longstanding pension dispute concerning benefits for 40,000 retirees and active teachers. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein announced the plan jointly with Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, at City Hall, with the mayor calling it a “historic and unique agreement.”
Merit pay programs, which break from salary schedules based on seniority and degrees, have traditionally been opposed by teachers unions. But they have been gaining ground across the country in recent years, and the idea is likely to get a major lift with its adoption in the nation’s largest school system.
New York’s plan is a twist on the traditional concept of merit pay. Pots of money will not be distributed teacher by teacher, but be given to schools that do a good job raising students’ test scores.
This year, about 200 of the city’s more than 1,400 schools that the administration characterizes as “high needs,” based largely on how poor their students are, will be eligible for about $20 million in bonuses. If they meet certain performance goals, they will receive an amount that totals $3,000 per teacher. Next year, officials said, at least 400 schools will be eligible.
It will be up to “compensation committees” at each school made up of teachers and principals supervisors to divvy up the money as they see fit. They could choose to distribute it evenly among union members or single out high performers.
The plan not only gives Mr. Bloomberg a policy change he has long sought, it allows Ms. Weingarten, a potential candidate to lead the national American Federation of Teachers, to cast herself as a reform-minded union leader.
Both the Bush administration and Representative George Miller, the California Democrat, who is chairman of the House education committee, have tried to promote the concept of merit pay. Leaders of the two national teachers’ unions — Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, and Toni Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers — recently objected to draft House legislation to renew the No Child Left Behind law because of a proposal to provide grants to school systems that choose to pay bonuses to teachers who excel in schools with high-poverty student concentrations.
Ms. Weingarten said the New York plan has “checks and balances” that brought the union on board. In each eligible school, the U.F.T. chapter will have a vote on whether to participate. And U.F.T. members join principals in determining how the bonuses will be distributed.