As the legislature makes progress and, hopefully, passes the Johnston Bill (SB 10-191), which adds to the authority of school and district leaders to remove teachers deemed ineffective, it is important to reflect on what it is, is not and should become.
The bill is an opportunity to move the lowest 5 percent of teachers out of the classroom. We know that there is a wide range in teacher effectiveness and that ineffective teachers can severely hamper children’s progress. We have evidence that poor and minority students are more likely to have ineffective teachers. We also know that with training, teachers and school leaders can identify those teachers who are not effective.
What we don’t know is whether we can implement these types of systems across the state because the bill is not just about teachers; it is also about schools, districts and community leaders.
Our principal workforce is in flux. A new generation of principals is entering the labor market at the same time that we are redefining the job. Many schools will not have stable leadership over the next five to 10 years. That means district and community leaders are under increased obligation to make sure schools attract and retain effective teachers.
This week’s report on the Cesar Chavez School Network, as well as the experiences of Tresa Waggoner, at a minimum, make it clear that personnel decisions can be made for reasons other than effectiveness. You may recall that Ms. Waggoner was a music teacher in Bennett who was asked to leave after teaching the opera “Faust” to her students.
Communities will get what they expect out of their schools. If they do not support leaders as they do the hard work of developing and implementing systems to identify and support effective teachers, then they should not be surprised when their schools do not meet their expectations.
This bill is not about assessments. We do not have, nor do I expect us to develop assessments that will reliably identify effective teachers in the majority of our classrooms. More importantly, good educational practice means that many teachers are responsible for each student’s learning. I am deeply grateful to the three teachers who have helped my first-grade daughter learn to read this year. There is no magic statistical method to identify which teacher should get that credit, just as there is no way to know who added to a secondary student’s science scores. Should science teachers get all the credit, or should we thank the social studies teacher who taught her kids how to read critically and answer complex questions?
In a related vein, this is not about statistics. The idea that 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation should depend on student learning should be taken as a policy statement not a technical statement. If a teacher’s students are not learning, then he should not be rated as effective, no matter what else he does.
We do not want the pursuit of technically valid determinations of an individual teacher’s contributions to a students learning to overwhelm our primary goal of helping all students learn. We must ensure that implementation of this bill does not impede the development of effective teams of teachers working to help groups of students learn and grow.
Finally, this bill should not be about cruelty. Forcing ineffective teachers upon students is very cruel. However, firing teachers who are well into their careers but do not qualify for significant retirement under PERA and don’t have access to Social Security is also cruel. We must examine our teacher retirement system to ensure that it’s fair to teachers who leave their classrooms at all stages of their careers, not just those who persevere for 25 years.
This bill is not a silver bullet. While we know that teachers are critical to student learning, we also know that effective teaching is enhanced by aligned curricula and good colleagues. And we know that assembling and maintaining a team of effective teachers requires ensuring that schools are good places to work where people feel they can be effective. This is just a step in the process of building a system that supports effective teaching in all of our schools.
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