Government Underground

I sat in on the testimony for SB 191 last week. I had signed up to testify, but the list of “star witnesses” that were scheduled to testify ran so long that I, a mere parent, never made it. Not that I mind all that much, because there was a lot of good testimony for the bill – far more so than there was against the bill.

In researching the opposition to Senate Bill 191, as well as listening to the full testimony on April 22-23, the primary opposition to this bill can be summed up as:

SB 191 is somehow punitive and does not include the teachers in the front end of the process.
There is a reliance on standardized tests for teacher evaluation (CSAPS were mentioned often).
Unqualified administrators are reviewing teachers and due process is needed to protect teachers.
There will be a huge cost and unfunded mandate.

I would like to address those objections, as I believe that they are unfounded.

SB 191 is somehow punitive and does not include the teachers in the front end of the process

“We need reform to be done WITH teachers, not TO teachers.” This is one of the main talking points for the CEA. The idea the SB 191 is somehow punitive and does not include teachers in the front end of the process is simply not true. In January 2010, Governor Bill Ritter issued an executive order creating the Council for Educator Effectiveness. The Colorado Education Association (CEA) fully supports and has endorsed the Governor’s Council. Teachers are represented on the Governor’s Council. Senate Bill 191 charges that very Council to define measures of effectiveness and to make recommendations for how this reform should take place. The teachers are very much included in this process. Based upon their own proclamations of what they want – a rigorous, objective, transparent and valid system – the exact language that is in this bill – and their role on the Council in drafting the rules of implementation, the CEA should be thrilled with this bill. It is clear that teachers are a part of this process.

There is a reliance on standardized tests for teacher evaluation (CSAPS were mentioned often)

Another key talking point being brandished by opponents of this bill is that teacher evaluations should not be based soley upon standardized tests. Annual CSAPS are mentioned over and over. This is a disingenuous argument aimed at deflecting the issue of accountability. Anyone who has actually read the bill will note that CSAPS are never specifically mentioned and that multiple measures of performance are provided for. As Senator King pointed out in testimony on Thursday, the bill specifically provides that “Multiple measures shall be used to determine teacher effectiveness…” Again, teachers on the Governor’s council will be involved in making the very recommendations on how to define and measure effectiveness. The CEA talking points and sound bites that this bill would legislate teacher evaluation based soley upon CSAP’s do not stand up to a fact check of this bill.

Unqualified administrators are reviewing teachers and due process is needed to protect teachers

On the CEA’s website, one of their talking points against Senate Bill 191 is that “While principals are the key to a good evaluation system, they often do not have the training or the time to do evaluations well. This is why teachers want a new, fair, credible evaluation system.”

So teachers don’t want principals to evaluate them? Current law on the books since 1984 already requires that only a person with a principal or administrator license who has received education and training in evaluation skills approved by the Colorado Department of Education can be responsible for evaluations. This current law would not be changed by SB 191. Even the CEA acknowledges these laws on their own website. If the CEA’s claim is true, then the current law is being broken. Seen any law suits the past 26 years? Me either.

The CEA website goes on to assert that “Teaching is a high-risk profession that requires professionals to be able to work in a supportive environment without fear of reprisals or capricious decisions by principals. The bill penalizes an experienced teacher with two consecutive years of “demonstrated ineffectiveness” (based partially on student test scores), forcing the teacher back to probationary status without due process.”

This is patently absurd. To simply be removed from tenure after two years of demonstrated ineffectiveness as documented by licensed professionals who are trained in teacher evaluation according to Colorado Department of Education standards, along with the commensurate remediation plans and re-evaluations is more than enough due process. This is the same as the current law already on the books, overseen by a council that already includes teachers, which has supposedly been followed by schools since 1984! In the past 26 years, I don’t recall hearing a whole lot about reprisals and capricious decisions being made by principals and teachers being fired right & left. The only anecdotes that I hear as a parent are the ones about the handful of teachers that we all know to avoid at all costs because they have tenure and the school can’t get rid of them. In point of fact, this entire evaluation process provides far more leeway than would ever be given to a private sector employee whose work performance is substandard.

There will be a huge cost and unfunded mandate

So what are the CEA’s budget-busting concerns?

This bill would cause tenured teachers and principals to be reviewed annually instead of every three years. Annual reviews are a basic means of accountability that virtually every private sector employee faces. This is not onerous. Mrs. Ingle argues that this would be a budget-busting burden because “School districts do not have the capacity to evaluate every employee every year under their current management structure and budgets.” It is supposedly beyond the capabilities of “current management structure and budgets?” to do annual teacher reviews, just like any other employee of a firm in the private sector? I don’t think so.

Mr. Salazar of the CEA testified yesterday that the costs will be tremendous, citing the implementation of and training for evaluation systems. Let’s think this through. Fact 1: teacher evaluation systems are already in place. Fact 2: CEA President Ingle has stated publicly several times that “The teacher evaluation system in Colorado is broken.” So we have established that there is a current system in place, and that it is broken – yet at the same time the CEA simultaneously objects to this bill on the grounds that implementing better evaluation systems based upon the CEA endorsed Council’s recommendations will cost too much? Does that make sense? There is a cost of time and resources already associated with the current broken system. Re-directing those resources in an improved system is simply a prudent course of action. In fact, testimony from several school superintendents on Friday refuted that this would be a budget issue at all.

The CEA’s Mr. Salazar also expressed concern regarding the costs of newly created career opportunities, or career ladders, as expressed in the bill. In yesterday’s testimony, Senator Steadman also expressed concern on this issue. As a taxpayer in a state with tremendous budget pressures, I also share their concerns. I strongly encourage our legislature to be diligent and judicious regarding the funding of any additional career opportunities. This is not a time for hand-waving conciliatory gestures toward fiscal responsibility. I do believe that it is important to address the issue of funding these career ladder opportunities in a manner that would not increase the burdens of taxpayers or school districts. Whether this is done by making the opportunities contingent upon outside funding, making it a variable expense tied to variable income, funding from current ineffective programs could be re-allocated, or some other method, I urge fiscal responsibility in this area. It is my understanding that the committee has proposed a method to fund any additional costs for new career ladders. I think we would all agree that we want to ensure that this bill would not create any unfunded mandates.

To loosely summarize the bill, the main impacts of this legislation would be to create annual reviews for tenured teachers (just like the private sector), tie a portion of the review for all teachers and administrators to their work product (just like the private sector), provide additional pay and career opportunities for highly effective teachers (just like the private sector), allow a teacher to lose tenure after TWO years of unsuccessful execution of their job (far more generous than the private sector) and allow schools to have the right to refuse to employ a poor teacher (just like the private sector).

And on top of that, this bill as amended would not even enact all of these much needed reforms until the school year 2014-2015. I would argue that this timeline should be accelerated.

What gets lost in this debate are the many, many fine teachers who would benefit from this bill – the highly effective teachers who could see additional career path opportunities in return for their exceptional performance and collaboration. There were some outstanding teachers who testified on Friday that were professional, enthusiastic and highly competent. They desperately want an opportunity to excel in their field. THEY are the people I want teaching MY kids. Enthusiasm, excellence and success are contagious. These folks had it. They should be rewarded. They should not be saddled with the ee-yores of the world who spread their cynical doom and gloom, wallow in pity and try their best to drag anyone around them down to their “experienced” level. The best piece of advice I ever got when I started teaching was to avoid the teachers’ lounge at all costs – it would suck the life out of you. Some things haven’t changed.

The fact that a teacher should be reviewed annually is not punitive – it is a basic standard of accountability. The right of a school to deny placement to a teacher who has been ineffective despite TWO YEARS of remediation is not punitive – it is a fundamental responsibility that each school has to their students.

God bless Evie Hudak’s bleeding heart, as she came to the brink of tears trying to say that teachers shouldn’t be held accountable for their students’ level of improvement, but I don’t know of any successful enterprise that has no accountability. The fact is that the measures of accountability (that teachers on the CEA approved Governor’s Council will help draft) will utilize multiple methods and will be only half of a teacher’s evaluation. These measures only would apply to a student’s change over the course of the year. It would be a measurement of “did they improve?” I’m an actuary. I know statistics. I’m quite willing to bet that the upward bias that results from effective teaching over the sample of a teacher’s 100-180 students would clearly outweigh the impact of a handful of students who did worse on their end-of-year test than on their beginning-of-year test because they skipped breakfast or worked late the night before.

That fact is that laws have been on the books regarding teacher evaluations since 1984. The CEA has been conspicuously absent in improving this process for 26 years. Now all of a sudden they want to fix a system that’s broken? It sounds like just the idea of Senate Bill 191 is starting to bring accountability to education. Anyone who supports quality education should support Senate Bill 191.

I was only three sentences into CEA President Beverly Ingle’s Op-Ed in the Denver Post on April 21 when I knew I had to respond. You see, her third sentence was a poorly worded question that actually made no sense, although I could infer what it was that she meant to ask. So, after reading three sentences of a piece written by the President of the Colorado Education Association, only 2 of them make sense. I used to be a high school math teacher, not an English teacher. Still, having been a teacher and dues-paying state/federal union member before leaving education, I am curious as to what this op-ed will reveal. Read on, intrepid taxpayer, let’s see if this was an aberration.

Next up, a false generalization stating that supporters of SB 191 claim that passage of the bill would guarantee that Colorado will win federal funds in Round 2 of “Race to the Top.” Certainly I could have missed it, but I haven’t seen anyone make such guarantees.

Next paragraph: a sentence mixing tenses stating that “Next year, Colorado school districts are receiving…” I believe that should be “will receive.” Continuing on, it looks like we have the classic straw man argument, setting up the potential value of winning Race to the Top funds of $25 per student vs. budget cuts of $450 per student. The actual title of the bill is “Concerning Ensuring Quality Instruction Through Educator Effectiveness”, not “A Guaranteed Method to Win Race to the Top Funding.” Mrs. Ingle seems to either be missing the point of the bill, or misleading us with a straw man argument.

Moving on, I see that her next line of objection to the bill is that it will create an unfunded mandate for school districts in Colorado. As I read the Colorado Legislative Council Staff Fiscal Note on the State and Local Impact of SB 191, I see that she is correct. The note specifically states that “These expenses for changing the evaluation and review process will be paid from existing school and district budgets.” I agree that legislating unfunded mandates can certainly be a problem.

What is Mrs. Ingle’s budget-busting concern? Every teacher and principal would have to be evaluated every year. This is too onerous for schools? Colorado schools already evaluate all non-tenured teachers annually. This bill specifically states that “Review and evaluation of probationary (non-tenured) teachers is unchanged.” Colorado schools currently review tenured teachers every three years. This bill would cause tenured teachers to be reviewed annually instead of every three years. Mrs. Ingle argues that this would be a budget-busting burden because “School districts do not have the capacity to evaluate every employee every year under their current management structure and budgets.” So increasing the evaluations of a sub-set of your teaching staff, tenured teachers only, from every three years to annually is beyond the capabilities of “current management structure and budgets?” If that’s true, then that’s a pretty damning indictment of the current system.

Mrs. Ingle states that “CEA and its members want a new system that is rigorous, objective, transparent and valid.” She’s in luck! The Colorado Legislative Council Staff’s Summary of SB 191 states that under this proposed legislation, “Teachers and principals are evaluated using multiple fair, transparent, timely, rigorous, and valid methods.” The summary states that boards must ensure that:

• teachers and principals are evaluated using multiple fair, transparent, timely, rigorous, and valid methods;

Other elements of the bill provide:

• at least 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation is determined by the academic growth of the teacher’s students;
• at least 66 percent of a principal’s evaluation is determined by a combination of the
• academic growth of the students and the demonstrated effectiveness of the teachers in the principal’s school;
• highly effective teachers and principals have access to career ladders that will help them earn additional pay in return for sharing effective practices with other educators; and
• the state can adopt and implement a plan for equitable distribution of highly effective teachers and principals.
• at least 1 annual observation with written report of principals

The other principal elements of the bill provide:

• teacher tenure after three consecutive years of demonstrated effectiveness
• review of non-tenured teachers remains unchanged

Here is the real deal killer for the CEA:

• at least 1 annual observation with written report of tenured teachers
• teachers shall earn tenure after 3 consecutive years of demonstrated effectiveness but lose tenure if they fail to demonstrate effectiveness for 2 consecutive years (not be fired, just lose tenure)
• a teacher may only be assigned to a school only with the receiving school’s consent
• teachers unable to secure a school assignment after two hiring cycles will be placed on unpaid leave until they can secure an assignment

So to summarize the bill, the major impacts of this legislation would be to create annual reviews for tenured teachers (just like the private sector), tie a portion of the review for all teachers and administrators to their work product (just like the private sector), provide additional pay and career opportunities for highly effective teachers (just like the private sector), and allow schools to have the right to refuse a poor teacher (just like the private sector).

Who wants to see us “Rushing to adopt a system like SB 191 proposes…” I do! Yet Mrs. Ingle states that this proposed system “will only result in another evaluation system that teachers view as a joke.” Really? Explain the punch line of this joke to me, a taxpayer who funds this system. What is it about a) annual reviews, b) tying a portion of one’s review to their work product, c) providing career opportunities for highly effective teachers, and d) giving schools the right to refuse a poor teacher, that constitute a joke?

Mrs. Ingle states that “The teacher evaluation system in Colorado is broken.” Really? Who has been in charge of this system to date? Who’s fault is this? Could it be… teachers, administrators, boards and unions? Mrs. Ingle states that “No one wants an effective, quality teacher in every classroom more than the Colorado Education Association and its 40,000 members.” Really? Yet in the same Op-Ed she states that their own evaluation system is broken.

Here’s the question that no one has asked the teachers’ union that opposes this bill – where have you been? In 1984 Colorado passed a law requiring evaluations of teachers. Where have you been the past 26 years? But now that the people have decided that evaluations should have consequences, the CEA squeals like a stuck pig. Give me a break.

The reality is that teacher unions are quite clear as to who and what they represent. The late Al Shanker, for decades the president of the United Federation of Teachers as well as the president of the American Federation of Teachers, was once asked why the AFT didn’t put more emphasis on students. He replied that, “When students start paying union dues I’ll start representing students.”

The CEA has rolled some of its 40,000 members down to the Capitol to cry crocodile tears when the reality is that they are simply protecting their own self-interests by fighting a bill that would cause every teacher to be reviewed annually, allow for bad teachers to lose tenure, create career opportunities for highly effective teachers, and allow for schools to refuse to accept sub-standard teachers.

Who wants to see us “Rushing to adopt a system like SB 191 proposes…”? Count me in.