A story was posted yesterday in the St. Louis Post Dispatch regarding a bill that was introduced to the state House of Representatives today, abolishing teacher tenure, and replacing it with an annual evaluation system based on student performance. Also, the teachers would be grouped into a 4 tiered system, basing their pay purely on the academic testing of their students. See below for more.....
(be kind, this is my first diary, thx!)
Under the proposal, all teachers, even those with tenure, would get one-year "probationary contracts" on July 1, 2012. After that, they would be ranked and grouped into four tiers in each district, with the top teachers receiving four-year contracts and the lowest-scoring ones receiving one-year contracts.
Additionally,
Salaries would vary according to tier. Top performers could make more than twice the salary of the lowest-paid teachers, who could be paid the minimum teacher salary, which is as low as $25,000 in some districts.
The bill requires that one-third of a district's teachers fall into the lowest tier.
The unintended consequences of this bill's passage could be far reaching. Such as,
- Creating extreme competition among teachers
- Disparities in performance depending on the class and location of the school district
- No protection against arbitrary termination
- No current exemption for for special education teachers or low attendance in classrooms
The current bill as it has been proposed, doesn't spell out what kind of tests would be used to gauge the student's progress.
Currently, student evaluations as administered by NCLB are very inaccurate, and don't take into account all sorts of factors that affect student performances (that's another diary entirely).
It often forces the teachers to simply teach to the test, and they are pressured to do so from the administrative faculty, as it is the purse strings that keep a school operating. Ive seen the first-hand effects of this in the last few years, as my mother is a high-school English teacher.
Currently, the Missouri School Boards Association supports this bill, while the NEA is opposed to it for obvious reasons.
The article from the post-dispatch can be found here:
Bill ending teacher tenure in Mo. gets first airing
And the bill (HB628) can be found here:
House Bill 628 language
If you live in Missouri, contact your state representatives about this immediately! I have hope that this won't become law since we currently have a democratic governor, but lets give this some support and help kill this bill now!
Thanks for reading!