Columbus
Dispatch...
Op-Ed: Merit pay
should stay in budget
By Terry Ryan
For as long as anyone can remember, in Ohio as in the rest of America,
a public-school teacher’s effectiveness and performance in the
classroom have had little to no impact on decisions about whether she
is retained by her district or laid off, how she is compensated or
assigned to a district’s schools or how her professional development is
crafted.
Instead, these critical decisions are made on the basis of
quality-blind state policies, like the notorious “last-in, first-out”
mandate governing layoffs, and tenure rules that allow teachers to have
job protection for life and “bump” less-senior teachers when jockeying
for positions. Effective teachers are forced to go, simply because they
have not taught as long as others, regardless of how successful other
teachers might be. Students are left with whichever instructors have
been in the system the longest, and teachers receive professional
development that is not tied at all to their individual improvement
needs.
To their credit, Gov. John Kasich and the Ohio House have been trying
to transform the system by which the state handles these crucial
teacher human-resources decisions. The biennial budget bill passed by
the House makes classroom effectiveness key in determining how teachers
are assigned to schools, whether their contracts are renewed, and- when
budgets make it unavoidable - how they are laid off. It would put in
place a teacher-evaluation system that incorporates student academic
growth and several other key job-related performance factors and would
rate teachers according to four tiers. Basic personnel decisions around
tenure, placement, dismissal and professional development would be tied
directly to the evaluation results.
The evaluation model in this bill resembles those developed in
bipartisan fashion in other states. Recently, Colorado, Florida,
Illinois, Indiana, Arizona and Oklahoma all have passed laws that
prohibit teacher layoffs based solely on seniority. These states now
require teacher performance ratings and/or evaluations to be considered
in making such decisions. What’s more, rigorous performance evaluations
in these states are not just in place to help determine which teachers
to let go. They also will help identify and reward highly effective
teachers and tailor professional development in ways that help improve
instruction. Ohio should do the same, and the teacher-evaluation
language presented to the Senate achieved just that.
Unfortunately, the Senate has dropped these provisions from its version
of the budget, preferring instead to maintain Ohio’s status as a
laggard state with archaic laws that force districts to consider only
seniority when making layoff decisions.
Some claim the budget doesn’t need to address teacher-quality issues
because Senate Bill 5 - the much-debated collective-bargaining measure
signed by Kasich in March - deals with these matters, too. (It is, of
course, expected to be on the November ballot for voter consideration.)
But they’re wrong. The House budget bill’s provisions are very
different - and much better.
While Senate Bill 5 does indeed remove the sanctity of seniority, it
largely defines teacher effectiveness through antiquated input-based
measures such as degrees earned and other paper credentials. Indeed,
the teacher human-resources provisions of Senate Bill 5 are essentially
unworkable, even if that law survives Election Day. They will be far
harder on districts to implement than the budget language and will not
get Ohio where it needs to go in boosting student achievement.
The House version of the budget would. It connects measures of pupil
academic growth to teachers and further connects teachers’
effectiveness to key personnel decisions. This is the direction other
states are moving because they know teacher effectiveness is key to
improving schools.
The House budget version also will help Ohio to fulfill the promises it
made in its successful $400 million Race to the Top application. The
state’s Education Department and participating districts already are at
work creating teacher-evaluation systems that incorporate student data.
This is in keeping with Ohio’s pledge to the feds to create a
“comprehensive evaluation system that will provide constructive and
timely feedback to teachers and principals, serve as a guide to
professional development and influence decisions regarding advanced
licensure, continuing contracts and removal of ineffective teachers and
principals.”
Further, Ohio agreed to place “effective teachers and principals in
their high-poverty and high-minority school through removing seniority
barriers.”
Moving toward a fairer and more modern system of gauging teacher
effectiveness and using that information to inform personnel decisions
will give districts the flexibility their leaders crave - and need even
more when budgets are shrinking. It will help them retain their very
best instructors while providing all teachers with the support and
professional development they need to get better.
Terry Ryan is vice president for Ohio programs and policy at the Thomas
B. Fordham Institute.
Read it at the Columbus Dispatch
|
