Education Reform Hot Topic At Statehouse This Session
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Part II of three
For students to have the best education, they have to have great teachers.
Part of the reforms being considered by the state legislature is how to make sure those teaching Indiana students are effective.
Warsaw Community Education Association President Terry Sims' concern with what the state is proposing is the effect those reforms will have on teacher contracts and evaluations. Teachers will lose their due process rights, he said.
Sims thinks the state wants to see teachers have a two-page contract and that's it. The state and some news media have put out propaganda of a laundry list of teacher demands that are so far out that it paints all teachers as prima donnas.
"If you talk to our superintendent and school board members, you'll see we've never negotiated anything like that," Sims said.
Warsaw teachers have not taken pay raises the last two years, Sims said, to help keep teachers working and classes small. The WCEA has not taken any job action in the last 30 years, and has been committed to not doing that for the past 20 years.
State Rep. Dave Wolkins, Winona Lake, said he supports the bill limiting collective bargaining because only benefits and wages should be negotiated. He said there are things in teachers' contracts that shouldn't be there.
"There's lots of different things that should be left up to the school," he said.
Wolkins said he agreed with Sims, in a sense, that the bill does take away some of the teachers' rights, but he still favors local control and that's what it's about.
Another part of the reform is tying teacher pay to evaluations. Good teachers would see monetary increases. However, Sims said, if the state can't pay schools now, how would it work?
"We don't approve of test scores tied to teacher evaluations," said Sims. He said the merit of doing so is small.
"We're not against change, we're for common sense," he said.
According to the Associated Press, a Republican-controlled Senate committee began debating a bill last Wednesday and plans to vote on it Wednesday. The idea is that Indiana teachers would be evaluated each year and ranked into one of four categories: highly effective, effective, improvement necessary or ineffective. Local districts may be allowed to create their own evaluation systems, but would have to include objective measures of student achievement.
Teachers who fall into the lowest two categories wouldn't receive any automatic pay raises, according to the AP. Those in the top two categories could get pay raises, but the salary increases would be based primarily on student academic performance and not on years of experience.
Wolkins said when it comes to testing and teacher evaluations, "Students don't have to meet a certain score." The state understands that some students will never score high, so it's coming up with a model that measures improvement.
The model for the evaluation was recommended by a committee of nine different people, seven whom are principals and teachers.
Another reform also centers around student testing. The state Board of Education approved a plan Wednesday that would require third-graders to pass a new reading test before being promoted to the fourth grade. Gov. Mitch Daniels is expected to approve the plan, according to the Indianapolis Star. If approved, it would take effect for students finishing third grade in spring 2013.
A new statewide third-grade reading test will be a new test developed by the same company that produces the ISTEP statewide exams, the AP reported. About a third of third-grade students fail the English and language arts ISTEP test each year, but the new exam will be designed with the expectation that all students who can read will pass the test.
Under the provisions, students who do not pass the test on the first try could attempt the test again in summer school, and could move to fourth grade if they pass then. The AP also reported all students would have to pass the exam to advance unless they qualified for one of three exemptions: special education students, English language learners and students that have been retained twice prior to fourth grade.
School districts won't get any extra money to implement the changes, according to the AP.
The proposal applies to all schools that have students in kindergarten through third grade, including charter schools.
"I feel the reform is more political than educational. If you ask teachers, I think most all of them would agree," Sims said.
What the Warsaw community doesn't see, he said, is how the federal and state governments have taken over local schools. When Sims came to Warsaw and started teaching 37 years ago, he said there was local control.
"I don't like the way it is moving because it is a control issue. School boards are losing control of their schools," Sims said. "... It wouldn't surprise me if some day we have no local school board."
He said he knows people think teachers, and he, have an agenda, but people need to look closely at what they're being told and in the bills because it will affect their children. Veteran teachers are being driven from education, not because they are bad teachers, Sims said, but because they don't think maybe it's worth it. That could result in mediocre teachers, he said.
Wolkins said, "Teachers' morale is as low as it's ever been." However, he said, they've been fed misinformation. They are getting concerned about issues they shouldn't be, and the state is not trying to cut teachers' salaries. The state just wants to improve education in Indiana.
Another example of local control being lost, Sims said, is the legislature's attempt to tell when schools to start and end the school year.
"Parents don't realize how little control they have over the education of their kids," Sims said.
Even board members are limited in what they can do for their schools.
"It has to be as frustrating to board members and administrators as it is to teachers," Sims said. "... I don't think I've seen teachers so demoralized over the state of things."
