Is it just me, or have the Republicans been increasingly more aggressive over the past 3 years or so in the execution of their (now) pretty bald-faced class warfare? This seems especially true on one of their main chosen battlefronts: education. Between the bills stripping tenure and hamstringing collective bargaining in Idaho and Ohio and the situation in Wisconsin, where the Republicans resorted to underhanded and frankly illegal measures to get their way, the Republican assault on public education has seemingly reached a fever pitch that is wearing on belabored and battle-weary liberal and progressive social justice crusaders across the nation.
Enter Missouri House Bill 628...
Much like the Idaho and Ohio measures, HB 628 strips away tenure and sets up a so-called "Merit Pay" system. According to the provisions of the bill,
168.1003. 1. All teachers who have tenure in a school district under sections 168.102 to 168.130 or section 168.221 on July 1, 2012, shall be placed by the district in which they are employed on that date on probationary contracts. Teachers employed to begin work in the district for the first time, whether as a novice teacher or a transfer teacher, shall be placed on probationary contracts on July 1, 2012. During the 2012-2013 school year, each district shall administer performance-based evaluations as required under section 168.1026 to all teachers.
Any teacher who had previously achieved tenure, no matter how long they've been teaching in a particular district, would have to start at square one in their district. The benefits of doing their job--and doing it well--for however long they've been doing it will vanish as if in a stage magician's puff of smoke.
No longer will tenure grant a teacher more leeway to tackle more risky material than they may have as "probationary" teachers, thus enhancing the overall education of their students by possibly exposing them to ideas and points of view they would not otherwise encounter. Moreover, they will also no longer be granted the protection from petty political disfavor from administrators, who could then doctor up reasons to terminate their contracts.
Once they've lost their well-deserved tenure, these teachers will be prone to a new system of evaluation. This evaluation will not be carried out at the state level, rather the individual districts will each rank their teachers in one of the four tiers. Individual teachers will not be competing with all other teachers in the state, but with their own peers, and their "ranking" in one of the four tiers will only be a reflection of their teaching quality relative to their district, rather than the entire state.
By far the most disturbing aspect of this bill, however, can be found in a paragraph detailing how these evaluations are to be carried out at the district level (emphasis added by me)
2. In addition, the board of education of each school district shall cause a comprehensive, performance-based evaluation for each teacher employed by the district at least annually. Fifty percent of a teacher's evaluation shall be based on the performance of students for whom the teacher has responsibility and fifty percent on teaching standards developed by the district under section 160.045. No more than forty percent of a building's teachers shall receive a standards-based score in the top thirty-three percent.
This would in effect legally mandate a government-enforced bell curve. It would also rob the evaluations of any remaining intellectual honesty. What happens if more than 40% of a building's teachers happen to be excellent educators? Too bad, only 40% of them get into the Tier 1 club. Having to watch their own backs and compete for spots in the top tier will also make individual teachers less willing to collaborate, teach and learn from each other, and work together for the betterment of the whole faculty. This limitation of the numbers in the top performance tier and encouragement of competition demonstrates that this "merit pay" is not meant to reward the good teachers, but rather to penalize the bad ones instead of helping them become better at what they do.
There is also a section dealing with acceptable circumstances for teacher termination that includes the legally nebulous phrase "immoral conduct." The bill fails to define what constitutes such conduct, and with recent efforts to maintain and enforce other unconstitutional morality legislation like sodomy laws, does anyone else see a door yawning wide open if this bill is passed?
There is already a letter-writing campaign going on through teachers' groups across the state, and I have sent mine in. We need more than just teachers writing these letters, though. In fact it would be an even more effective statement if thousands of letters poured into State Representatives' offices speaking out against this bill. I only hope it doesn't come to similarly dire straits as the struggle in Wisconsin. Updated by Conn Man 8D at Fri Mar 11, 2011, 10:49:30 PM
Update: Oh, I forgot to mention. The Bill's main sponsor, Scott Dieckhaus, was a teacher for a grand total of four years before he bailed out to go work at his father's company. Axe to grind?
(I also fixed a couple of clunky bits of syntax that somehow got past my initial editing process... blush)