In addition to reading
Tough Liberal, the excellent biography of famed New York teacher's union leader
Al Shanker, I'm also working on the decidedly longer-titled
Pay for Performance Teacher Compensation: An Inside View of Denver's ProComp Plan.ProComp rather fascinates me. It's a performance pay plan that the teacher's union developed in concurrence with their local school board, approved by the rank and file, and financed by a vote of the people of Denver. It's easy to write off--spend a few minutes over at
NYC Educator's place to see what the educators of the big apple have agreed to in recent contracts--but never before have we seen all those factors come together into some form of agreement. Brad Jupp has emerged as the union face of ProComp, and he's one of the three listed authors of the book above.
And yet, I've got this mistrust of Brad Jupp that I can't quite explain. He appears to be a visionary union leader, perhaps even in the mold of Shanker, but he also doesn't work for the union any more--he took a job at the central office for Denver Public Schools in 2005. This, after the Progressive Policy Institute named him their
Innovator of the Year in 2004, based mainly on that much ballyhooed vision.
But let's think about vision. Can we really applaud Jupp's, when he saw fit to get out of ProComp and go for the administrative money instead? What does that say about his vision, if anything?
Last year
EduWonk played a punk card on the UFT when they implied that Jupp couldn't be trusted to present the teacher's voice during the
Aspen Institute meetings on No Child Left Behind, but I can't say that I disagree with the point. It's rather like making a jump from theism to atheism; do you carry any of the old beliefs with you, or does the label define you?
Labels: AFT, Brad Jupp, Eduwonk, merit pay, UFT
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