By Tom
Senators Rodney Tom and Joe Zarelli have come up with a new bill, titled the “Excellent Teachers for Every Student Act.“ It also goes by the name SB 5914. It would do six things:
1) Teachers will be laid off according to their evaluations, regardless of seniority.
2) Principals in high-needs schools get to decide whether a teacher can be reassigned to their school.
3) Teachers who don’t “show improvement” in three of their last five years can be fired if their principals determine that their performance is detrimental to student learning.
4) NBCTs must be evaluated in the “top tier” within two years of certifying in order to receive their stipend.
5) Only math, science or special education teachers can get a salary increase by earning more than 45 credits. Furthermore, no teacher gets credit for more than eight years of service in regards to salary increases. The savings harvested from this change will be put into a performance pay system, based on principal evaluations.
6) Those districts which were allowed to pay teachers over and above the state salary scale will now have to lower their salaries down to the state scale. (The state instituted a state-wide scale a number of years ago in order to give teachers in lower-paying districts a fairer wage. In doing so, they allowed a dozen or so districts to maintain a higher salary scale so that those teachers wouldn’t experience a pay cut.)
My main problem with the “Excellent Teachers for Every Student Act” is the inappropriateness of its name.
In fact, this bill doesn’t even begin to live up to that name. The first three provisions don’t put excellent teachers into any classroom. All they do is make it easier to get rid of non-excellent teachers. Senators Tom and Zarelli obviously believe there are a lot of them out there and they’re concerned that with fresh budget cuts, younger, excellent teachers will be laid off in lieu of older, crummier teachers. Maybe the senators forgot that it’s already possible to fire bad teachers. And not only is it possible, but it happens pretty frequently; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 2% of the teaching force gets fired every year for poor performance. That’s way more than any other profession.
It’s even harder to see how the fourth provision would put more excellent teachers in more classrooms. How would denying a National Board stipend to someone who doesn’t get a high evaluation put a better teacher into a classroom? It looks to me like it’s designed to double-check the National Board Certification process. Perhaps Senators Tom and Zarelli don’t believe the National Board process is rigorous enough. Perhaps they think that an overworked principal who spends ten minutes in a teacher’s classroom two or three times a year can make a more informed judgment than someone reading that teacher’s written portfolio, on which he or she spent over 200 hours compiling evidence from student work along with detailed description, analysis and reflection of the teaching that produced that student work. Maybe they think that after certification, there’s a tendency for NBCTs to backslide. If so, I’d like to see the evidence, because in my experience exactly the opposite happens: after certification, NBCTs continue to improve as teachers and they also begin to take on leadership roles in their school, their district and beyond.
The fifth provision, the one about moving from a standard salary scale to a performance-based scheme, is based on the premise that merit pay works. In fact, there’s no evidence to support that premise, and plenty of evidence that refutes it. New York City, for example, recently abandoned its merit pay system after finding no impact on student learning. Obviously this bill’s authors don’t value continuing education when it comes to teachers. Oddly, Senator Tom serves in the higher education committee, so he must see some value in going to college. Maybe he just thinks that once you’ve earned a bachelor’s degree, enough’s enough. Unless you teach math, science or special education, in which case you need to keep current. Go figure.
The last provision has nothing whatsoever to do with quality teaching. It’s simply a pay cut to those teachers who happen to work in districts that were paying their teachers more than the state average when the state went with a standard salary scale. I guess you can make a point about fairness in tough economic times, but I don’t think you could pull off the argument that this provision will put “Excellent Teachers in Every Classroom.”
I’ll tell you what will, though:
- High-quality job-embedded professional development, designed and delivered by teachers.
- Mentoring programs for every new teacher through the third year on the job.
- A fair and stable salary system that attracts and retains teachers who want to make this job a lifelong profession.
- Reasonable class sizes that make it possible to do a good job in the classroom.
- Stable support for National Board Certification so that more teachers will aspire to our profession’s highest standards.
And an end to this pervasive and non-productive culture of teacher-bashing.
@RAB: I don’t see anything in this bill about “dividing and conquering.” And I certainly don’t see it as a Republican attack, since Senator Tom is a Democrat. I simply see it as I’ll-informed policy. I think we’d all agree that there are differences in teacher quality. Personally, I’d like to use that as starting point for job-embedded PD led by teacher leaders. Nothing in this bill speaks to that, though.
I am always amazed by the “I” perspective of some teachers who drink the republican Koolaid and preach with a know-it-all tone based on their own limited experiences. In a profession where teaching and learning is the focus of our everyday, WE must work together rather than judge each other! WE must inspire and help each other rather than proclaim ourselves better than another! “Divide and conquer” is a strategy used to manipulate and bring about conformity–perhaps some of us are not as superior as we think.
Merit pay is wrong for WA!
Sooooo, how do you determine who gets the increases? The art teacher? The English teacher? The math teacher? The P.E. teacher?
We know that the system will not reward them all. The state won’t even maintain the funding for National Boards, and that’s a pittance by comparison.
How do we do it?
P.S. By the state numbers it looks like Language Arts teachers are getting the highest scores for their kids. Why not pay them more? Why pay math, science, and sped teachers more (as in the bill) when they aren’t getting the test scores?
P.P.S. The big irony in this conversation for me is that the younger teachers in my building (and we’re running out of younger ones with no new hires the last 4 years) are the ones identified most frequently as “last to arrive and first to leave.” It’s a bit of an assumption to suggest no work is happening outside the school, but students and parents are saying the same things. I know we’re not getting the best and brightest in this profession; they’re going to other industries. And, to be honest, I would never advocate that my students or children enter the teaching profession. Sad, I know.
Also, in most jobs you’re doing pretty good if you get a raise to keep up with inflation unless you’re judged to be doing a stellar job, take on extra responsibilities, or go to jump ship and prove that other folks are willing to pay more for you and your company adjusts to more accurately reflect what your skills are worth in the market.
You’re only worth your replacement value/what someone else is willing to pay, no more. And you are not entitled to get an automatic raise beyond inflation just for being around. Honestly, there are not many jobs where anything other than strong performance, expanded skills, or an expanded role are not behind raises that go beyond inflation.
It’s not just step increases. It’s boosts in pay available at set intervals that go beyond the normal step, COLAs that aren’t available to anyone but top step teachers, ramp ups in salary in the years just prior to retirement to lock in those teachers at a higher salary level, adding things like health care for life after a certain point, adding the ability for a spouse to collect pension after passing away, etc. All of these are features in many contracts nationwide that serve to dramatically distort teacher pay in years 20+ even if there are only 10-12 steps.
Me too, Dr. Pezz! The principals have a new evaluation system, too.
I think we’ll have a learning period where administrators adjust to having to evaluate based on a rubric, but once people learn the rubric, things will be more efficient.
The system is about to change with the new evaluation system. Do you (or anyone on here) believe it will start pushing people to be better?
Honesty alert: I do.
Dr. Pezz, I don’t see scores and scores of bad teachers. I see lots of mediocre teachers who have no real reason to improve. I see a few (my building has 4-5 of 60) really, really bad teachers. I see a few really, really exceptional teachers.
But nothing in our system, except the National Board process, encourages teachers to teach well. There’s no reason to be the very best teacher you can be, for whatever group of students is in front of you, unless you have a really conscientious principal or are a really conscientious teacher.
And I have used “really” too many times.
Tom, I agree. Too many teachers are coasting on the high test scores of their students, the extra tutoring some parents (like me, with math) are doing, and having affluent PTAs who provide all sorts of extras that make the job easier.
Kristin I worry about your school, too. And I’ll say this about differential pay: everyone should be working as hard as teachers in high needs schools. I think one of the hidden problems in education is the fact that there are a lot of teachers coasting on their students high test scores.
We cannot judge the profession by the lowest level of performers; this bill is apparently reactionary and does nothing to improve the profession. In fact, lowering salaries and limiting the fields in which raises can be earned is the exact opposite of what should be done.
I’m all for offering more to the best, but how do you measure that? No one has figured it out.
My principals were the not the best teachers when they taught; in fact, one taught the minimum expressly to become a principal and obviously has trouble recognizing good teaching.
Kristin, I honestly do not see the vast numbers of poor teachers you continue to list in your posts. Maybe I’m lucky, but I don’t think so; I wonder if your school has done a poor job of hiring or if the administration and local association aren’t doing a good job working towards the same goals. I live in an area of high poverty and diversity, see kids succeeding, and do not see very many teachers just trying to do the minimum.
Tom – I don’t think getting rid of pay-to-stay means no increase in salary, it just means increases in salary would be earned with different contributions than years or seat time.
Right now, teachers are almost exclusively financially encouraged to earn credits and stay in the profession.
I would argue that teachers who teach in schools with a high free and reduced lunch percentage earn more – way more. It’s harder to teach in those schools, and it’s harder to teach those students. Our best teachers should compete for the opportunity to teach in those schools.
And say what you will about studies that show merit pay doesn’t work with teachers – I’d say the current salary schedule works to get teachers to attend trainings and stay in the profession. It does nothing to encourage them to apply their training, teach well, or care about kids.
Dr. Pezz, the rhetoric just conflicts itself. On the one hand people argue that we don’t need legislation that holds teachers accountable for quality because principals are already doing a good job of exiting bad teachers. On the other hand people argue that we shouldn’t pass this legislation because principals aren’t qualified to evaluate teachers.
It seems to me that teachers don’t want anyone telling us what to do. Teachers don’t want anyone juddging how we do it. Teachers don’t want to have to worry about job security that’s based on performance. There is a lot of fear, here. We can do this! We can teach well, to any mark! Our principals can learn to evaluate and coach! Let’s not aim for a low mark out of fear.
I’m seeing principals in my district bust their buns to get incompetent teachers fired – and I’m talking teachers about whom parents are up in arms, kids are up in arms, and who are harmful and destructive as well as incompetent. These teachers are working the system to stay in their jobs. They’ve got subs coming and going, for months at a time. These teachers will be back next year and the principals will have to start the process over.
If there was some legislation that said teachers on probation or teachers with the worst evaluations would be RIF’d first, when we have RIFs this spring, those teachers would be gone. If this threat hung over their heads, instead of taking two months of sick leave to interrupt the evaluation process and stall, they’d have some incentive to stay in the classroom, improve their craft and get a better evaluation before the end of the year.
Right now, there’s no real incentive to improve. They know they won’t be RIF’d. They know how to stall the contractual procedure for nonrenewal of contract.
I don’t think “principals can’t evaluate” is a worthy argument against this legislation. Continuing with a system where ineffective principals are neither revealed or expected to step up is a bad idea, and most principals are effective and good at evaluating teaching.
When students are told, “You have to pass this state assessment to graduate,” they’re not allowed to argue, “But so many of my teachers are bad teachers!”
Now THAT would be a fair argument.
I assume that by “longevity bonuses” you mean step increases for each year you work. If so, Jason, I disagree. Right now we’re in a time where there are more teachers than jobs. That hasn’t always been the case and it won’t always be the case. I think we need incentive to encourage teachers to stick around. I can’t imagine even entering a profession where you never get a raise.
In a nutshell, I don’t think many people disagree that the best teachers should be kept and poorly performing ones let go, but the reality is that we do not have an effective way to measure this within a single building much less across the state.
The reliance of this bill on principals’ effectiveness has reduced it to nonsense almost immediately. This bill presumes that all principals have the abilities, time, and knowledge to assess teachers well.
This is a bad bill on many levels.
Jason – hear hear! The Tacoma News Tribune has released salaries for Washington teachers. It’s not a secret – but the TNT has a convenient searchable data base. You can pull up your school and see the range of salaries for people whose teaching you’ve witnessed first hand.
I’m amazed at how it’s the duration of time in the profession and not the effort or ability that determines a teacher’s salary. Some hard working, skilled teachers are earning half what some experienced, mediocre teachers earn.
There should be financial incentives to teach well and work hard. There should not be financial incentives to simply stick around.
I’m not against teaching as a long term profession. I’m against a system which is structured to strongly subsidize and incentivize teaching as a long term profession. I think you should be able to teach as long as you are effective and love what you do and earn a living doing that. However, I don’t think that I should design a system which is intentionally manipulative to push people who have been teaching for 15 years to make it 25. I think it’s a bad investment and bad policy.
Longevity bonuses just make no sense to me. Nor do benefit systems that penalize folks who are full time for many, many years but not all or even the majority of their working years. I’d much rather pay a substantially better base wage for all teachers or use the longevity bonus money to ensure we can have better mentorship and training for novice teachers in Teacher Residency-type models than cough up a ton of money for the teachers in the 20-25 years of experience range for their annual salary and pension.
I think Mark asks the right question. More than anything, this bill creates more work and greater responsibility for principals. Its success hinges on principals’ ability to fairly evaluate teachers, and to do so in the same manner as every other principal in the state. Most principals, however are already overworked. Moreover, many schools have shifted to a shared leadership model, with teacher leaders sharing many administrative responsibilities. This bill would dramatically change that dynamic, bringing us back to the good old days of kissing up to the boss.
Jason, I’m curious, why are you against teaching as a long term profession? Or did I misinterpret your comment?
Again… what in this bill will guarantee that principals will have the time, means, and effectiveness themselves to do meaningful evaluations on every teacher under their watch? If a principal barely has the time to get in to observe a bad teacher enough to document/remediate/prep for firing, how is he/she going to have the time to get in to watch all the good teachers for simple year-to-year maintenance?
This is a reactive, not proactive bill. It does not consider the ample evidence already questioning merit systems’ impact on student learning. I am not opposed to moving away from a seniority-based system, but this, once again, does not appear to be the answer. The answer, a Tom and others have pointed out, would require policymakers and taxpayers to invest in doing it right, not doing it fast.
“High-quality job-embedded professional development, designed and delivered by teachers.”
I wish there were more people capable of doing this out there and that more teachers who were all stars left the classroom to take on that role. Ultimately, however, It hink that this should be a district-level budget decision not a state mandate. State mandates for spending in specific areas tend to lead to a large number of low quality, fill in the RFP operators who see siphoning off these dollars as a guaranteed revenue stream.
“Mentoring programs for every new teacher through the third year on the job.”
Should be mandatory and a part of all teacher training. Every new teacher should go through a “practicum” where you’re not teaching a full load and getting substantial time to plan, reflect, observe, and receive instruction and mentorship. In fact, none of these things should go away after “training”, but should just slowly diminish.
“A fair and stable salary system that attracts and retains teachers who want to make this job a lifelong profession. ”
The current salary scales for most teachers are far from doing this properly. I’m not sure what you think this “fair and stable” system looks like, but it sounds a-ok to me. Key thing here though is not to incentivize teaching as a lifelong profession. You should incentivize it as worth doing each year, period. The crazy incentives to stay in teaching for many, many years severely hampers the ability to attract new teachers.
“Reasonable class sizes that make it possible to do a good job in the classroom.”
Although I always hear of the exceptions to this rule, it seems to me that in MOST places (though not all) this battle has been largely won and is unlikely to shift far back in the other direction. I don’t know much about the context in Washington, but in aggregate class size has dropped pretty dramatically since the late 1980s and for many students this means falling into the range where small shifts up or down are unlikely to make a difference.
“Stable support for National Board Certification so that more teachers will aspire to our profession’s highest standards.” To be honest I think that schools should invest in that level of evaluation with all teachers virtually all the time. The kind of intensive work and reflective qualities that I understand as being required for National Board Certification should be in the job description. It’s something all folks should be doing all the time to ensure they’re doing a good job.
Anyway, my point with all that is to say we don’t disagree as often as it sometimes seems on here.
However, I think there needs to be greater principal autonomy (and accountability), an 8-year longevity bonus improperly distorts the compensation of teachers, distortions in pay scale for certain districts lead to unfair competitive advantages that may lead to adverse effects (though I think that districts with traditionally underserved students should be able to pay more to attract at least an equal quality teaching force), and that additional graduate school credits are a terrible measure of quality.
Jeez. After my restful hiatus from the fray, it seems I’m going to dive right back in. Sometimes I think I need a force field or something. Okay. Here I go.
I really like 5914. In fact, I was going to write a post about it but you beat me to it.
I earned my National Boards, like you, and I continue to work to improve my craft. And I don’t mind being evaluated. I don’t mind that someone thinks National Board certified teachers need to continue to demonstrate excellence. Is it supportable to say, “Eight years ago I submitted an awesome portfolio. I still deserve that stipend.”? I think it is okay to expect National Board teachers to step up each and every year. In fact, I agree with you that most National Board teachers already are, so it should be an easy thing for them to do.
I think the fact teachers are paid for putting time into whatever training offers clock hours, in order to climb the salary schedule, is a silly way to boost a teacher’s salary. Recently I spoke with a (National Board certified) colleague who said, “I work until 6:00pm revising lessons, planning, and examining student work. The guy down the hall puts his time into earning clock hours, and now he earns $15,000 more a year than I do.” There’s a lot of professional development that’s worth something. There’s a lot that’s not. I’d like to see teachers increase their salary by 1) taking leadership roles 2) teaching well and 3) teaching in challenging schools. In fact, if we’re going to get into how do we determine whether a teacher’s teaching well I’d say, pay the teachers in challenging schools more. Period. And trust the principal to eliminate teachers who aren’t teaching well.
The argument against seniority based RIFs is not a young vs. old argument, and it’s a red herring to make it so. Not that you did, necessarily, but it’s turning into that. It’s not “let’s get rid of the old and expensive teachers.” It’s about the senselessness of ignoring quality when it comes to lay offs. It’s true that principals can, do, and should fire poor teachers. But it’s not that easy. According to state law, teachers have 60 days to improve once they’re put on probation. I know of three teachers who are using sick leave to interrupt the 60 days. They’re on probation. Their principals are working hard to fire them. Their students are experiencing a series of substitute teachers. These teachers are hanging on, tooth and nail, and buying themselves another year. In September they’ll be back, and the principal will have to begin another 60-day period.
While I agree the teacher-bashing needs to end, and I love your final list of what should happen, I feel like we don’t have much ground to stand on when we refuse to agree to be held to standards of quality, when parents are forced to pull their children and pay for private school because their only option is a long-term sub and an incompetent teacher, when teachers think education is about their job and not doing their job well.
It is not outrageous for society to expect teachers to teach well. It is not outrageous for society to change the laws that have protected teachers at the expense of students. And they have, Tom. The current laws were designed to protect teachers against unethical administration. Perhaps they’re outdated. They are now being used to protect teachers from being fired for incompetency. Do we want to support that? I don’t. I think incompetent teachers should be fired swiftly and easily, so that their students and their colleagues can get on with things.
I know mine is an unpopular view among teachers. I know that. But still, I am a teacher, and I agree with the idea I have to prove my worth each and every day in order to keep my job. I’d have to do it if I flipped burgers, and I’m okay with having to do it if I’m trusted to teach more than a hundred children a day.
Tom, You did an excellent job of outlining the points the public is not really aware of. I have had conversations with those promoting a “business model” when in fact, we are dealing with humans. The product is not definable as in a business selling cars, shoes or even services such as lawn care. No two children learn exactly alike and no two teachers teach exactly alike. Yet, all could succeed in unpredictably non-measurable ways. Alas, I am singing to the choir. Thank you for your well stated insight.
Nancy