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Teachers in Seattle's Public Schools approve a new contract agreement with the district on Thursday, after tense negotiations around whether student test scores should be used to evaluate teachers. At the same general meeting of the Seattle Education Association, teachers and other school district employees also passed a no-confidence vote in Seattle Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson.
The contract vote means that kids will start school Wednesday, Sept. 8, as scheduled. The no-confidence vote affirms teachers deep disapproval of how the superintendent has run the district in the past three years.
The final contract approved by teachers was a document of compromise around whether student test scores should determine which teachers are providing high-quality instruction, and which teachers are not making the grade. Test scores will be one piece of a new teacher-evaluation system. However they will be used in a much more limited way than district administrators first wanted.
