In the ongoing saga of the D.C. public teachers' contract negotiations, a proposal by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to allow teachers to earn more on the basis of their students' performance has provoked controversy.

The teachers have an opportunity today to meet directly with Michelle Rhee to discuss Rhee's proposal. Some among the union leadership are unhappy about the prospect of such meetings and they have encouraged their membership to boycott these meetings, saying they are being bypassed in the process and that Rhee is trying to sell a plan based on performance pay.

Rhee takes a different perspective. She argued, "It's a tremendous opportunity. Teachers are going to be compensated at much higher rates... At the levels they deserve to be."

Rhee's first year as D.C. schools Chancellor has been marked by big changes: she is closing 23 under-enrolled schools, re-classifying hundreds of employees in the central office and laying off 98 of them, and in 10 of the schools that flunked federal standards, she has fired the principals and brought in outside partners to run them.

Rhee said, "This is not about just sort of frittering around the edges, it is incredibly substantial change that needs to be implemented."

Now Rhee is turning her attention to teachers. She has proposed a two-tiered salary system, in which teachers could get sizable salary raises if they give up seniority rights and assume greater accountability for their students' test scores. The union has opposed linking teachers' pay to how well their students are doing, but under Rhee's plan, some teachers who are effective in the classroom could earn the highest salaries of any teacher in the nation.

Rhee tells ABC 7 that she has gotten some ideas from the teachers themselves, and will be incorporating some of them in her final proposal to the union.

Also tonight, the State Board of Education is meeting to look at making more demanding requirements for teachers to get certified, having them go through the renewal process more frequently, and having that renewal be performance-based.