D.C. contract. Have we seen this before?

The Washington Post’s Bill Turque says that the new D.C. teacher contract has a familiar ring to it.

The language in the contract between the District and the Washington Teachers’ Union soars with promises of a new day. There will be collaboration, school turnaround efforts, pay-for-performance and serious mentoring for novice instructors. It vows “to jointly engage in the struggle to rebuild public confidence in the educational product offered by D.C.’s public schools.” With this agreement, it adds, “we hope to signal that we’re on the right track.”

Ironically, Turque points out that this is the language of the last D.C. teacher contract, not the one just ratified by barely half the members of the WTU.

Turque claims the failure of the last contract is due to the turn-over in leadership. That contract was negotiated with the previous Chancellor, Clifford Janey. Janey was forced out by Mayor Fenty and replaced by the so-called Reformer, Michelle Rhee.

But the real threat to D.C. school improvement may not be in the problem of leadership turn-over, but in the imposition of even an even greater top-down governance model embodied in a contract that jettisons seniority and respect for teacher professionalism and replaces it with almost dictatorial authority by principals and management. Gone is the language of real collaboration. It is replaced with the language of monitoring, rewarding and punishment of teachers.