Illinois Lawmakers Target Teachers
Posted By thestatedtruth.com on January 3, 2011
The backlash is coming,…front row, center court!Â
From The Wall Street Journal…..
Illinois lawmakers are considering sweeping legislation that would link teacher tenure to student test scores, make it easier to fire ineffective teachers and curb teachers’ right to strike.
The measure, debated during a Senate panel hearing Monday, moves Illinois to the forefront of states’ efforts to hold teachers more accountable for student performance, while taking on the powerful teacher unions, which often oppose such changes.
Last year, at least a dozen states from Maryland to Washington revamped teacher evaluations and altered tenure rules—a flurry of activity spurred by Race to the Top, President Obama’s $4.35 billion initiative to reward states that overhaul education systems. Colorado passed a similar measure to the one proposed by Illinois, where leaders in both chambers of the state house appear to support it. No other state has gone as far as Colorado.
Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said states were pushing changes even though the Race to the Top money has already been given out.
“I think there is a real acknowledgment that teacher evaluations have been divorced from evidence of student learning for far too long,” said Ms. Jacobs, whose nonprofit seeks improvement in teacher recruitment and development.
Teachers unions in some states have fought changes in teacher evaluation and tenure polices, complaining the new plans are often rushed and rely too heavily on student test scores, while those in other states have backed the moves.
Illinois labor leaders offered up their own plan Monday, dubbed “Accountability for All.” It calls for training local school-board members so they could more effectively make budget decisions and negotiate teacher-union contracts. It also mandates that every district have a qualified teacher—not a substitute—in the classroom.
Performance Counts builds on changes approved by Illinois state lawmakers last year that linked teacher evaluations to student achievement for the first time. But that legislation, adopted in an unsuccessful attempt to win Race to the Top money, did not mandate the ratings be used in tenure decisions.
Under the new plan, teachers would not earn tenure until they’ve been rated “proficient” or “excellent” by their principals for four years using the new evaluations. Now, public-school teachers in Illinois, like their colleagues across the U.S., get the job protection almost automatically after a few years.
Tenured teachers rated “ineffective” for two years could lose the job protection and revert back to probationary status. And the measure would streamline the firing process, making it easier to get rid of low-performing teachers. The plan also makes teacher performance—instead of seniority—the driving factor in school layoff decisions.
But most controversial, the measure would severely curb teachers’ power to strike. Now, teachers can strike after negotiations fail. But the proposal would mandate that the two sides go before a mediation panel and give the local school board the final say on whether to accept the mediators’ proposal. Unions could strike only if the school board failed to accept the agreement.
“The threat of a strike is so significant, it casts a very long shadow over the negotiating process,” said Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, an education-advocacy group that helped craft the proposal. “If you want the other reforms to stick, you have to deal with the strike issue in state law.”
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