> Teacher compensation
> Evaluation
> Hiring, transfer and assignment
> Layoffs
> Leave
> Tenure
> and much more.

Context
The formal policies and agreements that establish the rules, roles and rights governing teachers have important consequences for what schools can and cannot do. Despite their importance, collective bargaining agreements and personnel policies too often escape public scrutiny. We aim to bring greater transparency to what is contained in these agreements. It is important to note however, that collective bargaining agreements do not exist in isolation. What can be negotiated is shaped by state laws. Furthermore, state laws often provide the framework for policies, the details of which are then negotiated by districts and unions.

Related Work
While there have been a number of efforts to analyze individual state contracts, we are breaking new ground with this project. NCTQ is the first to create a national, publicly accessible website that contains both the full text of agreements and a database that permits easy searches on key terms, unlimited analysis and comparison. To date, there has been no single source to go to in order to view these agreements. Even those available online, their format makes them unwieldy to search. Consequently, there has been almost no research on these contracts, as much as they impact schools.

Building Consensus
In designing the site, we recognized the need to build wide consensus in the education reform community. Both of the nation's largest teachers' unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) have provided us with useful feedback and will continue to do so. Each school district and local union had the opportunity to vet our data so that they too would have the opportunity to make corrections and comment on the accuracy of our findings. We believe that fostering positive relationships with unions and district leaders is essential to the strength and integrity of this database.

Policies, Not Practices
This website tells you what the policies of a school district are. It does not tell you what the actual practices may be.

Many agreements and handbooks are silent on many of the questions that we ask in this database. In fact users may be surprised at the extent to which these formal policies do not address issues of importance to schools.