Analysis Questions Inflexibility of Contracts

Districts could save billions if freed from terms, author says.

Many school districts could lavish a fifth or more of their current budgets on measures to raise student achievement if they axed spending on teachers’ contract provisions that do little good in that area, argues a report unveiled last week by the think tank Education Sector.

Among the provisions that researcher Marguerite Roza contends “have a weak or inconsistent relationship with student learning” are such common arrangements as teacher salary increases based on years of experience and advanced degrees, days set aside for professional development, extra teachers’ aides, class-size limits, and generous sick leave, health benefits, and pensions.

If the deals for teachers did not include any of those perks, Ms. Roza of the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Schools calculated, the nation’s public schools would have about an extra $77 billion...