Chicago Folds on Teachers' Union demand on tying pay to evaluations

This is very disappointing.  The pay increases seem like a secondary issue to making sure that public school teachers have the right incentives.  The media reports on whether the pay increases will be 4% a year or the agreed to 3%, 2%, 2%, and 3%.  From the LA Times:

In one of the central disagreements of Emanuel’s proposed reforms, the union says it preserved so-called “step and lane” pay increases for teachers, in which teachers receive raises for each year of service. The district had hoped to tie teacher compensation to student scores on standardized tests; the union says only 30% of teachers’ evaluations will come from student test scores, the minimum under Illinois state law. . . .

In other words,  the unions gave up nothing.  The minimum agreement was what the union had to agree to under state law.

Will the media ever note that about 40% of public school teachers in Chicago send their kids to private schools?  Probably not.

UPDATE: A slightly different notion of what is in the contract is available from the Associated Press:

Emanuel, who did not personally negotiate the deal but monitored the talks through aides, has pushed hard for a contract that includes ratcheting up the percentage of evaluations based on student performance, to 35 percent within four years. The union contends that is unfair because it does not take into account outside factors that affect student performance such as poverty, violence and homelessness. . . .

Is this all that Chicago was asking for?  To go from 30 to 35% over four years?  I suppose that I thought that more was being asked for.

UPDATE: The increase in work time is trivial and still leaves Chicago teachers the best paid, least worked teachers around.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel did win a longer school day—to seven hours from five hours and 45 minutes. But the city had already agreed to a union demand to hire 500 additional new teachers to help fill the longer school day, and the average teacher will work a mere 15-20 minutes more per day.

UPDATE: From NRO

Emanuel got rolled by the CTU. Their “concessions” are laughable: Student achievement now accounts for 30 percent of teacher evaluations, but the State of Illinois already requires 25 percent. Teachers will receive raises of 3 percent, 2 percent, and 2 percent over the next three years, on top of automatic step-and-lane pay hikes that are already set in stone. And the school day will be longer, but teachers won’t be teaching any more hours; the city is required to hire hundreds more teachers to fill out the longer school days. All told, the deal will cost Chicago hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years. This is a resounding defeat for Rahm Emanuel and the education reform movement. . . .