(Here is the most outspoken Senator's response against SB191 and below is one perspective that is pro-SB191. - promoted by Fong)
Cross-posted at my blog EvieHudak.com
Before explaining why I voted no on SB 191, I want to say that I appreciate the willingness of my office-mate, Senator Johnston, to listen to me and accept some of my suggestions on the bill. Also, I commend Senator Shaffer for trying to broker a compromise on this bill, as well as Senators Bacon, Heath, and Steadman for their many hours of work in that effort.
I tried very hard to get this bill to a place where everyone could agree. On 2nd Reading I proposed Amendment 80, which would have done just that (by striking the controversial section that has been creating all the uproar - the one that removes teachers' non-probationary status after two years of being rated "ineffective"). However, neither that nor most of the substantive amendments I proposed were accepted. The changes made to this bill in the Education Committee and on 2nd Reading helped, but not enough. They don't get to the heart of what is wrong with the bill.
The first problem with this bill is that it is a huge unfunded mandate. I'm glad we put a cost study into it; but analyzing the cost doesn't pay for it - any more than measuring students' knowledge of the content helps them learn more of it. During the Education Committee meeting on Thursday, April 29, in regard to Senate Concurrent Resolution 2 (which proposes a ballot issue to give the Legislature the ability to raise taxes to pay for education), a witness said, "We've cut our schools to the bone." It's true - our budget cuts are causing staff to be laid off, programs to be eliminated, class sizes to be increased, and schools to be closed. Yet this bill requires numerous things that it doesn't propose to pay for: |
1. It doesn't pay for interim assessments that the local districts will need to develop to assess student growth in every subject and at every grade level that we don't have CSAPs in. (By the way, the cost just for developing the new CSAPs and other summative assessments required by CAP4K has been estimated at between $80 million and $140 million.)
2. It doesn't pay for tracking mechanisms that districts will need to develop in order to gather the data on which teachers are probationary, non-probationary, effective, ineffective, put back on probationary status, and put back on non-probationary status.
3. It doesn't pay for the extra staff, such as assistant principals, that will be needed to cover the many tasks principals have besides evaluating teachers, such as dealing with discipline issues; much of principals' time will be taken up evaluating every teacher several times every year so as to determine their effectiveness. (By the way, my school district, Jeffco, is cutting assistant principals to save money.)
4. It doesn't pay for the training principals will need to do the evaluations on the new effectiveness criteria. The Council has not yet made its recommendations for what the other half of effectiveness is - the half that's NOT test scores - but I promise you that if their recommendations are any good, those things won't be things you can determine by a 5-minute drop-in. And do you realize that principals turn over an average of every 3-5 years? That means the principal training will be all the more necessary.
5. It doesn't pay for professional development to help the ineffective teachers improve - at least I assume that districts would try to avoid constantly hiring new teachers and instead help teachers who are familiar with their curriculum and programs regain effectiveness.
6. It doesn't pay for the career ladders - we had an estimate in the Education Committee that these might cost as much as $40 million dollars.
Even if we could pay for all the things I just mentioned, this bill still has a fatal flaw. It may be called Ensuring Quality Instruction Through Educator Effectiveness, but what the bill is really about is not helping teachers become effective. Because if it were, it would be about providing the things we know help teachers be more effective: good induction programs, mentoring and coaching, and collaborative planning time. Research shows that if we invest in those things, we will make our educators more effectiveand ensure quality instruction.
But what this bill is about is setting up a system that will provide a way to remove teachers' non-probationary status - what people call "tenure." [I'm not going to belabor the point about how what we have in Colorado is not tenure (I'm from New York - that's where they have REAL tenure), but for the sake of easy conversation, it is being called that.] Look at all the headlines - this bill is about eliminating tenure. Now I know Senator Johnston says that the bill is actually about improving teacher evaluation, because by using a better evaluation system we will ensure that we keep only the effective teachers. But the other states that that changed their evaluation systems based on effectiveness - Delaware, Tennessee, and Illinois - made no changes to their tenure systems. Why are we doing that? We don't need to do it to qualify for Race to the Top, because the states that got the big grants in Round 1 didn't.
I can only assume that the reason is what I heard from several of the witnesses who testified in favor of the bill, who said we need to eliminate tenure to improve education in our struggling schools. But I say that the problem with education in those schools is not that there are too many ineffective teachers. I say the problem is that we have growing numbers of students who lacked a quality early childhood and thus will always be behind, students who need more intensive services, students who need more individualized instruction - while, at the same time, we have dwindling resources to meet the needs of these students. Last year we passed SB 163, the accountability reform that will do enough to hold schools accountable if students aren't showing growth. The right solution to teacher effectiveness would be to provide more support for teachers and students in struggling schools and to provide adequate resources for those schools. My school district is planning to cut out half of its instructional coaches and most of its mentors for new teachers, because of budget cuts. Most of the others probably are too.
I think it's a great idea to improve teacher and principal evaluation. It's something that's needed. The Council on Educator Effectiveness will help us do that. But that's all we need to do. The first half of this bill is fine, wonderful. But add the second half, and it goes too far.
I could not in good conscience vote for this bill. I implored my colleagues in the Senate to search theirconscience and see if that's what theirs was telling them. The final vote was 21:14 in favor of the bill. The other wise Senators who joined me in voting no were as follows: Bacon, Boyd, Carroll, Keller, Morse, Sandoval, Schwartz, Shaffer, Steadman, Tapia, Tochtrop, Whitehead, and Williams. |
