A couple of measures aimed at weeding out ineffective teachers and principals will be presented to state lawmakers in the 2010 legislative session, and supporters say the proposals will put Colorado at the forefront of innovative education reform–crucial to winning “Race to the Top” K-12 education dollars from the federal government.
At stake is federal stimulus dollars designated for K-12 education competitively awarded to the top tier of states demonstrating their commitment to education reform through concepts set forth by the Obama administration. The application deadline for first-round consideration is January 19.
Both measures would restructure the way teachers obtain and retain tenure, now granted after three years of probation. Education reformers in both parties as well as some public-school administrators long have said the current system can give a teacher too much insulation from accountability and serves as an obstacle to advancing the best teachers–or culling out the worst.
“My bill will ensure that bad teachers aren’t passed on year after year,” says Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial, a veteran lawmaker who authored one of the two pending proposals.
“I know that school districts and teachers don’t want to protect unsatisfactory teachers. At its core, the most important component of education is the quality of the teacher,” said Spence, a longtime advocate of wide-ranging education reforms who has worked closely with both parties at the Capitol.
The Spence bill extends the probationary period of a new teacher from three years to five years and makes tenure subject to renewal every five years thereafter, pending a written review.
The other proposal is being offered by Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Denver, who was appointed to the northeast Denver seat last May by a vacancy committee when former Senate President Peter Groff resigned to take a position in the Obama administration. Johnston has ties of his own to the Obama administration, serving as one of the president’s top three education advisers during the 2008 presidential campaign.
“My bill would revamp the entire evaluation system for teachers and principals,” said Johnston, adding that his bill, if passed, would provide, “a clear, and high, bar of how teachers earn tenure and how they keep tenure.”
The measure proposes linking teacher evaluations to student growth and measuring effective teaching. Principals would also be evaluated based on their percentage of effective teachers, student growth and leadership abilities. Current evaluation methods assign teachers a satisfactory or unsatisfactory rating after their three year probationary period that is arbitrary with little or no feedback, Johnston believes.
“I think that the evaluation system is broken, and I experienced that both as a teacher and as a principal,” he said. “Right now, what we have is an evaluation of teachers based on a 30-second walkthrough by a principal that doesn’t give us good information.”
Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs, the House Education Committee chair who will sponsor the Johnston bill in the House along with Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, says he is glad to see the issue at last addressed. A retired schoolteacher, Merrifield says that the satisfactory rating that he always received was a meaningless label that communicated little about how he could improve or be recognized for what he was doing well. He also feels confident that K-12 teachers will support his bill.
“Evaluations for teachers have for a long time been a joke,” said Merrifield. “If we can come up with an evaluation system that is really useful, takes a deep look at teacher’s effectiveness, and then makes suggestions on how they can be more effective teachers–I think that most teachers would be pleased to have that opportunity.”
It remains to be seen exactly how the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, will weigh in once the bills are formally introduced in the legislature. Johnston and Merrifield say that they have spoken with the union and others but have not yet sat down to iron out differences.
CEA spokeswoman Deborah Fallin said her organization won’t take a position until it has been able to examine the bills, but she said extending the probationary period for a teacher, as Spence’s bill does, would be unacceptable.
“What can we find out in five years that we can’t in two to three years?” asked Fallin.
Johnston acknowledges that his bill would be dramatically different from current state law and unique among the states –earned tenure based on performance and keeping tenure based on performance –while Spence maintains that her bill would be less disruptive and a more simple solution by requiring teachers to prove their effectiveness over a broader number of years.