Over the next 10 days or so, Colorado will sit dead center in the debate over how to improve public education in this country. Senate Bill 10-191, which would make significant changes to teacher tenure and teacher evaluation in Colorado, will make its way – or fail to—through the Colorado House of Representatives beginning this week. It has already passed the Senate.
A Florida bill with some similarities to SB 10-191 (but much harsher changes to tenure) was vetoed last month by Gov. Charlie Crist, earning him a lifetime’s exile from the Republican Party. Now the National Education Association is turning its heavy guns on Colorado, hoping to bury state Sen. Mike Johnston’s bill before it becomes law.
Their chances of success look pretty good. The NEA, the Colorado Education Association and local teachers’ unions are powerful lobbying machines. The perception that Johnston’s bill is anti-teacher, that it seeks to blame teachers alone for the failures of American public education, seem to be taking root, at least in some quarters.
In a decidedly unscientific survey, comments on the Education News Colorado web site and blog are running against the bill by a substantial margin. Whether this is the result of an orchestrated campaign is anyone’s guess.
It is going to be one heck of a fight, and the stakes could not be higher. SB 10-191 represents a major gamble by local proponents of Obama-Duncan reforms, because its failure would alter the course of reform in Colorado in unpredictable ways. It would almost certainly kill any chance the state might have to win $175 million in round two Race to the Top money.
A visit to Denver last week by Diane Ravitch, the highest-profile opponent of Race to the Top, underscored how much disagreement there is, here and across the nation, about best way forward. Ravitch said she hoped SB 10-191 would fail, because it is unduly punitive and scapegoats teachers.
She also urged all states, including Colorado, to run away from Race to the Top as fast as possible because, she said, it is built on the rotten foundation of No Child Left Behind.
It’s interesting to note that Ravitch’s visit was sponsored in large part by local foundations with whom she disagrees on these issues (and who are funders of EdNews).
As I’ve said before, I hope Johnston’s bill passes. It’s far from perfect. But many of the most prominent arguments against it border on fear-mongering. And the alternative seems to be doing nothing. This may be what the unions not-so-secretly want, but standing pat would be catastrophic.
In the past couple of months, however, I have sensed a shift in momentum on these big education questions. Until recently, people pushing school choice and the revamp of tenure and evaluation – the Obama-Duncan agenda – seemed to have the energy and mojo on their side.
Lately, though, the passion and commitment seems stronger among those fighting those reforms. The unions and their supporters are newly energized, and are waging an effective campaign against the changes. Their victory in Florida pumped them full of new life.
Unfortunately, I don’t see people fighting the Obama-Duncan agenda putting forth any affirmative ideas of their own. But hey, if being the “party of no” is working for the GOP, why shouldn’t it work for the so-called progressives trying to kill SB-191?
One reason momentum may have shifted is because people who support these changes have a more nuanced perspective. Take a recent Education Week blog post by Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. While voicing support for SB 10-191, he acknowledged it and similar bills in other states have major flaws, and urged legislators to slow down and take on these complex issues one bite at a time.
“…the impatient rush to “fix” teacher quality in one furious burst of legislating is leading to troublesome overreaching and putting the cart before the horse. The result: hugely promising efforts to uproot outdated and stifling arrangements get enveloped in crudely drawn, sketchily considered, and potentially self-destructive efforts to mandate a heavy reliance upon value-added assessment (known as the growth model in Colorado).”
“The first task is to uproot anachronistic policies and structures to create room for smart new solutions to take root. (Think of the first decade of welfare reform in the 1980s). Only after a couple years in which we’ve given districts a chance to feel their way, and after a handful of alpha locales have crafted some promising approaches, does it make sense for state legislatures to start offering more direction. I blame a lot of this current “one fell swoop” mindset on Race to the Top.”
“I understand the frustration with the status quo and union resistance that has fueled “fix it now” thinking. I understand fears that nothing much will change if states don’t mandate it. But K-12 schooling is a big, complex exercise. Large, hurried solutions have a way of working less well than hoped. Impatience and lashing out in frustration can lead to bad policy–as with NCLB’s 100% target for 2014 and its Kafkaesque remedy cascade.”
Thoughtful stuff. I only wish the naysayers would be as thoughtful.
Popularity: 6% [?]
As with all involved in this conversation, I too fully endorse efforts aimed at improving the quality of education experienced by students in US schools. Seems like we all have that common touchstone. I also believe that strategies can be enacted that may be safer, more equitable, and more effective than the proposed legislation.
For one, administrators (or someone in the district) needs to document poor teaching over time and use that as the basis for removing poor teachers from the classroom. I don’t believe you need complicated and expensive statistical data to make your case. Rather than value-added modeling, which is susceptible to all sorts of flaws linked to inequitable outcomes, I think a solid rubric and multiple observations and collection of teacher work (such as assessments and lesson plans) should provide a sound basis for removal of ineffective educators. (Current trends in social science research increasingly embrace the notion of using qualitative data to substantiate causal relations, which would include teacher evaluations.)
This should be done in the first few years of teaching, as the research that I’ve been involved with of late shows that many teachers do not change their practice in any substantive way over time if this has not been their common practice and if they remain in the same school context. If they aren’t good after three years (or whatever the tenure deadline may be), it’s not likely that they will improve if they stay in the same school.
Also, as a suggestion to Senator Johnston, I’d encourage him to think about legislation that aims at nurturing teachers development over time as well as documenting the quality of their teaching. Again referring to the research I’ve been involved with for the past five years, we’ve found that certain skills and dispositions link directly to quality teaching and improved student performance. This includes: (1) regularly reflecting on one’s teaching practice and using the insights gained to modify future teaching (precisely what any good coach does); (2) promoting collaboration about matters of importance among teachers with similar approaches to teaching, among teachers who work in the same content area, and with sources of professional growth outside the school, such as universities; (3) helping teachers realize that all teaching involves social justice–if students fail to learn in one’s classroom, it’s an injustice that harms both the individual and our democratic society; and (4) promoting high expectations for all students throughout schools, something Manual HS in DPS presently seeks to promote.
From my perspective, these approaches offer a less punitive and more nurturing approach to educational change. That seems a reasonable and appropriate approach for an educational institution. It may be a challenge to formulate legislation with these ideals in mind, but ultimately they may prove more effective and less costly.
The debate surrounding SB 10-191 seems to be focused upon the tenure issue, when the need for change in the system goes far beyond that single, polarizing issue.
Eliminating tenure doesn’t “put the blame” on teachers for current weaknesses in the education system, it merely changes an out-dated and largely unnecessary structure that protects the weakest of the status quo.
Change in the status quo is something that we can all agree is desparately needed.
Though Gov. Crist of Florida recently vetoed the bill to end tenure in that state, he did sign a bill to increase school choice. This new legislation, dramatically expanding the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, will have broad impact upon the school system as it provides tax credits for private school choice.
Both of these laws move the education system toward greater transparency, opening up a closed and tightly controlled system that, in Denver, graduates only 50% of it’s students from high school while protecting the entrenched participants that count the hours until their rich pensions kick in.
Teachers are not the biggest problem in the current system, but they can be part of the solution, as can administrators, school board members, union leaders, parents and students.
The tide on education management is turning. Tides can be fought for a while but continue to flow tirlessly, exhausting those that attemtp to swim against them. By learning how to use the tide, one can effortlessly be taken places far beyond those thought possible.
An open system, with greater transparency, more choice and fewer protections for the entrenched management, is one of those places. SB 10-191 is a small step in the right direction.
…just thoughts from the West Side.
Just to clarify, teachers don’t have tenure. They have do process; a series of steps that need to be followed. This is a common mistake that many make, even teachers.
Jane,
Sorry, but that falls somewhere between dead wrong and horribly misinformed. “Tenure” refers to job protections so that a person can only be terminated for just cause — even in higher ed, there is a “just cause” provision. No position has absolute protection (i.e. you can’t show up to class and read a magazine, even if you are tenured). K-12 public teachers in Colorado unmistakably have both tenure and due process, as the two are not mutually exclusive.
See: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issues/tenure/
Now the real question is under what standard tenure should be granted or reviewed, and in this case K-12 teachers have far lower standards than their high-education peers, who go through a much more rigorous review process (and have a much lower pass rate). K-12 teachers both have tenure, and are granted it under comparatively minimal evaluation standards. That, at least, should not be in dispute.
Alan wrote, “I don’t see people fighting the Obama-Duncan agenda putting forth any affirmative ideas of their own.”
Some of the people with affirmative ideas would rather devote their energy to enacting them than to fighting over a bill that will “alter the course of reform in Colorado in unpredictable ways” whether it passes or not. It has already been observed in these pages that after all the hyperventilating, the result of this dust up will almost certainly be anti-climactic.
I took a couple of political leadership and policy development classes a couple of years ago and I learned that the state level life cycle of a legislative idea from it’s beginning to it’s passage into law averages 3 years. Maybe this particular policy idea is not immune to that general pattern of development.
I’m with Pat and the others who have voiced the opinion that an explicit focus on helping teachers do better will probably contribute more to quality schools than a focus on pointing out which teachers do poorly. Both activities are important and necessary. Which one is the cart and which one is the horse?
I have yet to see a major piece of legislation pass in perfect form in it’s first iteration. When we pass major legislation and refuse to go back and correct, we end up with a mess similar to TABOR.
National health care reform is the current example. No it is not a perfect solution to a huge issue, but at least the nation is moving forward.
Can we not take the same approach to education reform? Pass SB-191 and stay with the idea adjusting and amending as we learn.
Educators tell students not to be afraid of risk. Cannot educators and legislators listen to those same words?
As a parent, I support SB 191 because families deserve to know that effective teachers are in the classrooms. According the Widget Report, parents ask “who are the best teachers, and where do they teach? The question is simple enough. There’s just one problem—except for word of mouth from other parents, no one can tell you the answers. In fact, you would be dismayed to discover that not only can no one tell you which teachers are most effective, they also cannot say which are the least effective or which fall in between.”
SB 191 is the first step to creating, in a collaborative manner with teachers, students, parents and administrators, effective evaluations that will be tested for unintended consequences before being rolled out by 2014/2015. Yes, we will all need to be vigilant to ensure the evaluations are fair, rigorous, and timely. But to maintain the status quo is not acceptable.
I fought to get my daughter high rigor assignments at North this year. Some teachers did a great job; others assigned very little. Great teachers and leaders have been let go from North due to arbitrary and capricious political maneuvering that did nothing for the school. I am furious that excellent, effective teachers and counselors were let go from North High because of what appears to be personality conflicts. SB 191 will give effective teachers proof that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. The current method of retaining or removing teachers rests solely on the whims of the principal. Parents have zero say in any of this.
For those who blame the parents and the students, please show me your assignments, your homework, your updated grade books, your call and email log to parents to share concerns about the kids. Show me what supports your principal has put into place to help struggling students. Principal ratings are linked to student growth and it will be in the principal’s self-interest to provide needed supports.
Provisions have been made to eliminate highly mobile students from the bill. Provisions have also been included to address “high risk” students. As a parent, I will do my part. The districts need to do theirs.
I want to be nurturing, but when faced with so much shoulder shrugging and shirking of common sense solutions, I’m left with the statement, “There ought to be a law.”
Citizens should call their House Representatives TODAY to support SB 191. Thousands of citizens have shown support by signing the citizen petition at http://www.greatteachersandleaders.org.
Sorry, Elisa. SB 191 is just more teacher bashing based on the false premise that testing represents 50% of the education process. I understand your frustration. However, SB 191 is just another quick fix destined to fail as quick fixes usually do. CSAP tests were a quick fix and have failed to significantly improve student progress.
The bill is designed to roll out by 2014/2015. Not exactly a “quick fix.”
Because of CSAP and PSAT, I knew to hire a tutor to improve my daughter’s math scores. Like it or not, our children’s future – scholarships and entrance to universities – depends on their ability to score well on ACT and SAT, as well as other measures.
It’s a quick fix because it was too hastily written, just before the legislative session. Incidentally, doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that Johnston had the legislation in December, 2009, but didn’t introduce the legislation until April? Nor did he seek the advice of either State Reps. Judy Solano or Mike Merrifield. I prefer the 60 years of experience and acquired wisdom of Solano and Merrifield than the less than 10 years experience and wisdom (?) of Johnston. Also, SB 191 closely resembles legislation vetoed by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. In fact, Florida teachers are set to desert the Democratic Party and support Crist for Senator.
I beleive that 191 does focus on helping teachers do better. Incentivizing principals to build collaborative cultures within their buildings will improve teacher quality. The Bill does this by evaluating principals on the growth of students and the number of “ineffective” teachers in the building. You cannot achieve either of these goals, increased student growth and effective teachers without collaboration. If a principal does not establish a collaborative culture, they will be gone. The other part of this Bill that has not received any publicity is the change in state statute that will allow for teachers to evaluate other teachers. This change reflects, in my opinion, the spirit of this Bill: to identify underperforming teachers and principals in order to start remediation.
Let’s remember that from the time a teacher has been identified as underperforming to the time that they could be released is THREE years! How does this negatively impact the current due process?
While I think that there are some much needed provisions in SB 191, as an educator I have a few concerns with which no one has provided me with a sufficient answer.
The first concern is the application of the 50% based on performance. For years, it has been readily apparent that some teachers leave “difficult” assignments in Title I schools for more affluent suburbs because it is simply easier to get students to the Proficient or Advanced levels. The growth model is supposed to alleviate this and is truly a step in the right direction. My question though becomes, “What about a school that shows proficiency but no growth or even decline?” Will administrators be willing to make decisions about retention and dismissal in teachers whose students are clearly meeting standard but not growing? What are the implications of this?
If this is not going to happen, in my opinion there will still be a steady exodus of teachers to more affluent settings because the perception (real or not) is that it will be “easier” to teach without the pressure of having to perform?
Lastly, I would like Mr. Johnston to give an assessment of his performance based upon the framework he is proposing. This may sound snarky, but it is not meant to be in any way. I believe he did some wonderful things in Mapleton, including getting it on the map nationally and increasing his college acceptances dramatically. However, based upon School Accountability Reports his school, MESA, was given a Low-Stable, Low-Low rating in his last two years there. This after he was given much freedom and support to design and implement innovative programs.
What would he have done differently that we may learn from regardless of whether SB 191 passes?
Thanks Michael and it’s nice to see I wasn’t the only one here who had similar complaints about Johnston’s bill. Teachers don’t like it because it is vague and 50% is an arbitrary figure, pulled perhaps out of thin air. And yes, Principal Johnston’s genius apparently could not get past his own tenure at Mapleton. And for this, he is lauded as some kind of wunderkind?
Also, Alexander, “…(i.e. you can’t show up to class and read a magazine, even if you are tenured).” Actually, you can. I’ve seen it happen, just two years ago in my high school. Teacher showed videos the entire year, students slept and played under desks, learning nothing. Teacher was talked to but could not even be removed from the classroom thanks to legalisms and formalities. In this case, the union should have been ashamed of itself for holding to its policy of shielding the uncaring teacher.
And yet, I am against Johnston because his bill is simply not well thought-out and put-together. It still seems to me he is carrying water for the new powers that be in Washington.
Michael, the data you refer to is not the student growth data referred to in SB 191. Based on how I understand the Bill the median student growth percentile would be used as ONE measure for a principal. For MSEA, where Johnston was principal in 2007 this was 24%, for 2008 it was 35.5%, and for 2009, it was 54.5%. Wunderkind? No. Effective Yes.
Thank you for the response Mark. I think the data you mentioned is very much worth noting, but again this is where the confusion only gets deeper. Which set of data are we to use, what value will be put on different results? The school accountablity report card, released to and widely read by the public, lists MESA as a Low performing, Low Growth school for 2007-2008. We all know and have seen how different interpretations of data can at best muddy the water, at worst, create the feeling in the community that there is a disconnect between what is said and what is practiced. We need not look any further than what is being said about 3rd grade reading scores. 9news even had a piece that suggested the frightening drop, and it is frightening in some schools, can be attributed to a harder test.
While supporters of SB 191 may think of themselves as reformers, I think Diane Ravitch is correct in stating that they are really “deforming” education. Relying primarily on testing to evaulate teachers is not reformational at all. Rather, it’s regressive. Reform minded educators have been, for decades, utilizing higher order thinking techniques that require students to be analytical thinkers rather than rote learners. Aren’t SB 191 supporters some of the same folks who suggested that arts education and physical education were unnecessary? If so, we can refer to them as Deformers of education.
Denver Public Schools is in, at least, its 22nd year of various school reforms.
Elisa, do you remember when the 9th graders were moved out of Skinner Junior High and into North? That was supposed to be the big problem solver. How’d that work out ? Ed, surely you remember the “miracle middle school model” which promised that all would be well if only the sixth graders were moved out of elementary school into middle school. That was a real winner.
And Alan, remember site-based management and the CDMs and the Center for Quality Schools? Remember how DPS canceled summer school in 1991 and instead paid for “consensus training” for housewives, politicians, business people and other “stake holders.” Wow, thank god for Piton. Where would we be without that plan?
And, of course, who can forget the magnanimous intervention of the Gates Foundation to fix Manual High School, back in 2001.
Same song. Different verse.
Yes, Joanne, I remember all of those attempts at change and improvement, and I know you were witness to — and commenter upon — all of them. I tend to be as skeptical and hard-bitten about this stuff as the next guy. But while pointing out failures can be helpful, how about also giving people credit for trying to solve some of the most intractable challenges this nation faces?
Sorry, Alan. I can not give credit when the consequences to some if not all children have not been good. I believe it is time to adhere to the standard of “First, do no harm.” And that comes from being a “witness” to all of these reforms, and seeing our family impacted by some of them. I believe that it is imperative to have some safeguards in place so that children are not victimized by ill considered “reforms,” or as I have said before, to insure that the children of today are not sacrificed to create a new system for the children of tomorrow.
I am not sure that the educational challenges are so intractable. How would we measure? Newsweek (May 10, 2010) has an excellent article in their Science Section by Sharon Begley, entitled: “Second-Class Science-Education research gets an F.” I don’t even know where the baseline would be.
I believe that it is crazy making to throw out tenure on the “promise” that somehow, someway, a better evaluation system (for both teachers and principals) will be developed. A better evaluation system which up to now, has eluded everyone.
I really don’t want to see vouchers take the place of a public school system, but I don’t see any alternatives.
How about the AFT (local and national) supporting SB 191? You know something is starting to shift. The current evaluation and tenure system is nuts. How can any reasonable person say that the current system of giving lifetime teaching employment after three years is good for kids or helping teachers gain the respect and income they deserve? It’s a breath of fresh air from the other union….I can hear the ghost of Al Shanker.
While Brenda Smith may speak for the leadership of AFT, specifically Douglas County, the state’s membership has not been polled. Personally, I oppose this misguided nonsense. I challenge Mr. Schoales to prove that the present teacher evaluation is “nuts”. Further, I challenge Mr. Schoales and other SB 191 supporters to demonstrate how poor school districts will be able to fund their own teacher evaluation system. Mr. Schoales and others are looking for yet another quick fix instead of addressing two persistent problems, underfunding of public education and the vocabulary gap that exists between poor and rich students.
Ed Augden
Local 858, Denver Federation of Teachers
Mr. Augden, Has CEA or any of its local unions polled their membership on this issue or any other issue of importance in recent memory? I haven’t seen it, but would be glad to know about such a poll if it existed. As you are an AFT member opposed to SB 191, several CEA members came to testify for the bill in the Senate Education Committee. It would be nice to see the unions acknowledge diversity of opinion on these issues within their ranks.
Mr. Augden,
You assert: ” Mr. Schoales and others are looking for yet another quick fix instead of addressing two persistent problems, underfunding of public education …”
Is education truly “under-funded” or are the available resources “under-managed”?
Just how much does it cost to optimally educate one child every year?
I’d really like to know, so that we can settle the funding issue and move on to other, more important challenges within the current education system.
…just thoughts from the West Side.
You know what seems to be missing from this debate? Who is questioning the standards movement that is the foundation of this quest for raising the stakes on academic achievement scores? (I haven’t read Ravitch’ book, but it sounds like she might be.)
Remember the arguments against mastery learning and outcome based education?
I remember when students would return to the mastery learning loop and thus be denied enrichment. Is that so different than forcing students who are not testing at the proficient level into intervention classes and thus denying them art or PE or other electives? Is “intervention” in practice that much different from “remediation”? Are intervention classes sometimes populated primarily by minorities or low-SES students while the electives and enrichment programs are populated primarily by higher SES students? Is this the right way to close the achievement gap?
Have the parents of the gifted/talented crowd stopped complaining about standards (outcomes) causing the lion’s share of resources to go to those scoring below proficiency, or have they simply opted out for home schooling or other alternatives to “regular” public schooling? Is NCLB also NCLA (No Child Left Ahead)?
And what about the reality that in many schools the focus on measurable outcomes (standards, benchmarks…) is turning education back toward worksheets, rote learning, and all those things that make kids want to drop out for lack of meaning? Is the pressure to perform on achievement tests translating into a quest for factory-style efficiency? Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times comes to mind as an apt vision of the workings of the hearts and minds of students and teachers alike under such conditions. There are plenty of students who behave not far from Charlie dancing around with a wrench in each hand twisting the wrong bolts. Charlie is mistaken for a communist, imprisoned, and ends up high on coke; not so different from the fate of many of our students.
And who is questioning the research that is saying What Works in Schools when that research is mostly done in factory-model schools?
Indeed, is the standards movement unwittingly further entrenching our systems in the factory model at a time when the digital age could be finally breaking us free of the archaic system within which we have so long suffered?
I’m all for administrators documenting and driving out the teachers who need to get out, but not in such a way that will simultaneously perpetuate the madness. Removing some teachers without fundamentally changing the factory system will do little to improve education, and SB 191 just might further entrench the system. We should be focusing on improving the profession; a profession where teachers have more time, more resources, and better PD to work together to improve themselves, each other, and a system that is mostly working against them. How much progress will they make with maybe 50 minutes a day for planning, grading, and so-called reforming.
There are charters and alternatives seeking to break free of such a factory model. Will SB 191 make it more difficult for even them to do so?
Sure, children need skills and we need to do our best to determine which they need and how we know they have them, but they are not products and they are not outcomes and let’s face it, they do not and probably should not all be held to the same standards. Not facing this has led to crushed spirits and lives of crime for students diagnosed with disabilities on the one hand, and mind numbing boredom, drug addiction and even suicide for those who were maybe five years above grade level by age twelve.
Rather than encouraging innovation, the 50% rule in 191 could very well lead to teachers who fear doing anything other than towing the line and doing exactly what the data crunching, curriculum mapping, and principals tell them to do to raise a few more test scores. What a disheartening time to be a teacher. I commend those who can stomach it, but under 191 will there be enough who can? And will the new blood be able to stick it out or will those stats just get worse than they already are?
SB 191 is not reform. Ravitch reportedly calls it “deform” and she is correct. If you want to reform schools I say begin with the architecture, both physical and cyber. But that is another discussion.
To quote from Jane: “… teachers don’t have tenure. They have do process…”
Jane please tell me that you are not a teacher. Please confirm that you are not a teacher with tenure. Please tell me that you are not interacting with my children on a daily basis…
…just thoughts (and fears) from the West Side.