Several national AFT leaders were quietly involved with the negotiations between Baltimore City Schools and the local union which resulted in the just announced path-breaking new pay-for-performance Baltimore contract that will replace the so-called “steps” and “lanes” of the traditional teacher contract.

The problem with class size mandates is not whether the mandated class sizes should be 20 or 24 or some other magic number. The problem is that class size mandates end up determining the amount of total dollars that are going to education and result in assigning just enough teachers to hit those ratios. This creates an inflexible structure where we inadvertently institutionalize a broken way of grouping teachers and students into one-teacher classrooms.