Senator Aaron Osmond represents Utah Senate District 10. Osmond serves on the Utah Legislature’s Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee. He is sponsoring the Education Employee Reform Act during the Utah Legislature’s 2012 General Session. The bill eliminates the Orderly Termination Act and make changes to how educators are evaluated, paving the way for local districts, not the state, to set policies to manage their workforce, to eliminate so-called “teacher tenure” and implement performance pay. These concepts have the Utah State Board of Education’s support. (Read Sen. Osmond’s follow-up to this blog post “Lessons Learned and Next Steps: Sen. Osmond Discusses Public Education Reform Bill Feedback.”)
Senator Aaron Osmond, Utah Senate District 10
I am genuinely interested in understanding your perspective as we evaluate this important proposed legislation. I will listen to and act on the information that I receive.
As I have met with parents, educators, and administrators, many have asked me if I could simplify the details of the proposal down to a few bullet points that we could easily discuss and compare. Here are the key points of the proposed legislation as I see them. I have also included the motive/goal, the risks, and benefits below each point to help you better understand why each item is being proposed:
1) Local Control of Due Process It is proposed that we remove all language related to Orderly Termination from our State Laws. Instead, the State will set up a new law that requires each School District to have and follow their own “due process” policies and procedures for the hiring, evaluation, and firing of employees (classified employees, educators, and administrators) at a local level.
a. Motive/Goal The goal is to reduce and decentralize state control over education employment and to further empower local control in the hands of our school districts. We also want to reinforce that “one-size does not fit all”. For example: policies that may work for urban districts will not always work for rural districts.
b. Risks The Orderly Termination Act has provided districts with state law about how public education employment problems are to be handled. It provides a consistent “due process” guideline for the evaluation and termination of employees across the state. Removing this state law makes each district accountable to provide their own policies which may or may not be reliable and defensible in a court of law should an employment action be challenged. Some district leaders and some attorneys are nervous that this could become a costly legal problem when inconsistencies in policies between districts are challenged.
c. Benefits The key benefit is that it enables our local schools districts and boards to make their own policies and work closely with their own constituents to form policies that meet their local needs and realities. Many feel that with the new Teacher Evaluation Guidelines being developed and rolled out by the State Board of Education, they will have a reliable and consistent evaluation tool set to protect them. This will reinforce local control and reduce the risks mentioned above.
2) Fixed Contracts instead of a Guarantee of Continued Employment It is proposed that we change the employment law relative to public education employees from a “guarantee of continued employment” sometimes referred to as “tenure” to a fixed contract relationship of varied contract lengths based on the employee type. Under this model the state would establish maximum contract lengths for each employee type. Districts would be able to negotiate a contract of any length up to the maximum contract lengths set by the state.
a. Important Note: The proposed bill understands that some of our long-term experienced educators may not want to move from their current employment relationship. As such, the bill provides for an “opt-out” clause, allowing these educators to stay in their current employment model for up to 10 additional years before they must move to the new contract model. However, by doing this they also “opt-out” of all performance pay opportunities.
b. Motive/Goal It is clear that public employees are unique in that they are employed by the government and thereby must be held to higher employment process standards than private employers are, and that these government jobs usually pay much less than the private sector. With that said, in our current economic reality, there is a growing public sentiment that no public employee should have an expectation or a guarantee of continued employment when private employees have no such benefit. Moving to contracts does address this perception, still requiring due process during the term of the contract, but forcing an evaluation of a role by administration on a regular interval, with no obligation that a new contract must be offered, thus creating a true contract employment model with due process built in.
c. Risks Often our educators feel that one of the few benefits left in their teaching field is the concept of a guarantee of continued employment and a more rigorous due process in evaluating their performance. They feel this is a fair benefit in context of their lower salaries (in comparison to the private industry) and the significant social burden they carry as our public educators in helping us to teach (and often help guide/raise) our children. This change could be viewed as another “slap” in the face of an employee population that already feels demotivated and overworked.
d. Benefits Contracts can be effective negotiating tools. When used correctly they can provide employment security and an opportunity to renegotiate and improve terms of employment on a more regular basis. It is also important to note that during the life of a contract, districts will still have the obligation to evaluate performance through established “due process” policies within the district.
3) Salary Ranges It is proposed that the State Board of Education be required to establish a set of salary ranges for each employee type that would be based on the following criteria and would be used as guidelines for educator compensation for all school districts to follow:
i. Specific Role (such as a Math or Science vs. Language Arts or History educator)
ii. Market Demand for that role (market need for the role and difficulty of filling the role)
iii. Years of Experience/Education
iv. Location (urban or rural)
v. Difficulty of the role (inner-city, socio-economic issues, special needs, ESL, etc.)
Under this new salary range, model school districts would be asked to identify how their teachers fall within those ranges and then work to address any disparities over a certain period of time.
a. Motive/Goal The goal here is to provide a method for both districts and employees to differentiate compensation based on value of a given employee. Instead of one-size-fits-all, great educators who are filling challenging jobs such as special needs, who are preparing kids for critical skills in the marketplace, and who are facing unique socio-economic problems, should be compensated more than others that are not.
b. Risks This model could be very difficult to implement with the many unique differences that exist between each district. It could also be very challenging to fund as we seek to meet the appropriate compensation targets for the various roles. In addition, such changes could become a divisive issue between educators and administration when the new ranges are set and it is clear that some roles should be paid less than others.
c. Benefits If used correctly, these new salary ranges will enable districts to truly differentiate and reward the differences in value between different education roles and the employees who fill them. Again, one size does not fit all. This model will enable us to actually address that reality and act on it over time.
4) Performance Pay It is proposed that school districts be required to establish a formal Performance Pay component of an Educator’s total compensation. The pay would be tied to student progress results that they directly influence. The school districts would be able to customize their own performance pay models (as collaborative or individualized), but they must ensure that at least 5 percent of an educator’s total compensation is tied to some performance pay model by a certain date in the future.
a. Motive/Goal The goal here is to financially reward and recognize great educators who are positively impacting student achievement and progress.
b. Risks Educators often work collaboratively in driving student progress and achievement. There is concern that introducing a formal performance pay model may cause educators to stop working together to preserve their own financial incentives and negatively impact the very things we are trying to reward.
c. Benefits If the model is used correctly, districts will have the ability to establish performance pay models that actually encourage collaborative work between educators and enable incremental compensation and rewards for this great effort in a more formal and consistent compensation tool.
Conclusion and Input Requested:
This summarizes the context and details of my proposed legislation. Now the time has come to gather input from our public education employees and educators. I sincerely want to know how you feel about these ideas and what you think the impact will be.
I will be travelling the state with Superintendent Shumway to gather your input. If you are unable to attend these meetings, please send me your thoughts via email. I am genuinely interested in understanding your perspective as we evaluate this important proposed legislation. I will listen to and act on the information that I receive.
Thank you for all you do to help the children of Utah reach their potential.
Related Posts
Changes to Orderly Termination Act
State Board member on teacher tenure, evaluations
State Board of Education Meeting Summary
The State of Education Address
When I originally commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get three e-mails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove people from that service? Thank you!
I am so sorry about this email issue. I will see what I can do. -Elizabeth Ziegler, UtahPublicEducation.org administrator
(I have taught in Utah for over 20 years, all grades from third through junior college, and had two children go through the school systems here.)
Let me begin by saying that I support the idea that teachers who are not doing a good job, and do not show significant improvement within a short period after being told what needs to improve, should be terminated. I also support the idea of some kind of due process for teachers who may be terminated, and the concept of performance bonuses. However, I doubt that the idea of making the process based on local/district policy would lead to general, significant improvement. Why? Consider the causes of current problems with teacher ‘tenure’ and evaluation:
1) Teachers are evaluated by their principals. Some principals are hard-working, intelligent, ethical and well-prepared for the role of evaluating their teachers. Unfortunately, a fair number of principals lack one of those qualities, or the time or integrity required. In my experience, teachers who have a personality conflict with the principal are more likely to be terminated than teachers who are performing poorly in the classroom. It is unpleasant and time-consuming to have to tell someone you have known, someone who may have been your co-worker in the past (in small districts, someone who may be your neighbor, relative or in the same church) that they are not doing a good job and need to follow certain steps to improve. Principals, in general, feel protective of their teachers – one of their roles is to mentor and help the teachers. That is a much more comfortable role than the ‘evaluate, criticize, re-train, or terminate’ role. Making policies local won’t change any of that.
2) Student test scores should be a legitimate source of data about teacher performance (with certain caveats, for example: the scores of criterion-referenced tests should be compared to the scores of the same students the previous year; consideration needs to be given to teachers of special needs students who are not likely to make the same gains as ‘average’ students, and to teachers of high-achieving students who may be ‘maxed out’ on the tests and won’t show significant gains; teachers shouldn’t be held accountable for scores of students who haven’t been in their class most of the year). HOWEVER, if pay is going to be tied to test results, the testing should be administered and supervised by disinterested parties. There are too many ways teachers and principals might be tempted to raise test scores when their pay, their job, and the future of their school is at stake. Making the process and regulation more local won’t improve this situation.
3) Creating policy is time-consuming/expensive, and fraught with legal land mines. At the least, it seems inefficient to have every district starting from scratch.
There are no easy answers, but let’s make sure changing the process will address the root problems, and isn’t just ‘change for the sake of change.’
I love you proposals. It is about time that we no longer have to wait for incompetent teachers to retire…while trying to keep students with complicated learning needs out of their classes.
RECOMMENDATION: As in other industries, allow the most competent teachers to move up the salary scale at a faster pace than coworkers. Competency is based on more than years of experience and education.–it involves enthusiasm, perserverence, initiative, creativity, collaboration, experimentation, diversified instruction, leadership, and effort. These teachers should be boosted to “head of the class” on the salary scale and employed as mentors for others.
Your proposal is a good start toward creating a dynamic environment in which “deadwood” is periodically removed and excellence is rewarded. Keep up the good work!
How would you accurately and fairly evaluate good teachers? Having worked in other organizations, I’ve found that the most competent people rarely get moved up the salary scale faster than their co-workers. Instead, it is usually the people who call attention to themselves or spend more time “schmoozing” the bosses that get the attention, whether it be in business or education.
Any interest in removing the “dead wood” in other professions, such as law enforcement, surgery or medical research?
Comparing public education to other industries is a fallacy most people outside of education make. In education there are so many outside variables affecting ones performance. Factors that would affect performance pay outside of the influnce of the teacher are: class size, student internal motivation, parent involvement, school leadership, and test scores. In the market place your “performance pay” for the most part is only dependent only on how hard you work, whether you get up in the morning etc.(granted there are other things like luck that may factor in) Take for example a doctor, you build your patient base and you work hard to make your money, depending on how many patients you have and how well you perform you make more money. Now apply the same variables a teacher has to deal with compared to a physicians: a physician doesn’t have to treat a specific group of persons in an area(they decide who they want to treat, oh they can also decide if they want to treat medicaid patients as well), a physician doesn’t have to worry about having too many patients that he can’t give them the appropriate attention they need. And lets say we rate the physician on how many patients he heals? and set up test scores for him on this, then base his pay off this. For the most part he may be successful, but there will definitely be situations that are beyond his control. As to your comment about deadwood, I would say more like driftwood, I like Arron’s attempt to change evaluations but cannot come to like this idea of merit pay unless it is collaborative and not a pay decrease with a 5% incentive.
I see your points entirely. I was expressing my frustration as a parent and prior teacher with the tenure program which makes it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers. My experience is across multiple school districts in several states. I was NOT referring to anyone in my current school district where I just started working. I fully appreciate the effort, caring, and enthusiasm with which most teachers perform every day against difficult odds. I hope that the concept of merit pay does NOT represent a pay decrease, but rather an incentive or promotion for exceptional teachers. You are right — it is difficult to find a way to assess that…but I think it is worth the effort.
Dear Senator Osmond:
Thanks for explaining your ideas and welcoming input. I am an elementary teacher with 17 years of experience. The vast majority of my work has been with high-poverty population schools and I love what I do. I wouldn’t trade my experiences working with my students for anything. I still feel young, though I am old enough to work with the children of my former students. I have many questions about your proposed legislation.
Years ago my school received a new administrator that immediately began to harass the more experienced teachers in the building. This principal considered few opinions outside her own. The teachers she hired were hailed as examples while others were either ignored or (worse) the subject of continual criticism. Teacher collaboration in our building, which had been strong and child-centered before, stopped as cliques formed. Another educator on my team worked long hours for her students and was even featured on a television news focus for innovative teaching. I watched as this administrator harassed her and terminated her contract; she had no recourse because of the “at will” status of her contract. Her students cried the last day when she told them she would not be returning. When this teacher left, another educator became the subject of this pattern of abuse. Though pleas were made to district administration, they chose to not interfere in what they felt was an internal conflict.
To make this long story shorter, my friend had a hard time finding a job. All the financial problems that follow unemployment lingered for years until the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission took on her case. In the end, the district offered a settlement and agreed to rehire the teacher. I have linked to a brief about this case.
So, Senator Osmond, I ask you: What does your bill do to protect those like my friend who were harassed and placed in financial straits until the courts intervened?
As you can see from the website I posted in this reply column, age-based discrimination does occur. What will this bill do to make sure that energized, seasoned teachers are not replaced with inexperienced (but less expensive) recent college graduates?
Another question: In your bills current model of progress, teacher compensation is tied up 5% to student progress. What forms would be used to measure this progress? Is it only standardized multiple choice tests? Parent surveys? Professional portfolios? Will these same standards apply to all teachers in schools funded with public dollars?
I want to clearly state that I am NOT defending burnt-out teachers who should have left the profession long ago. New collaboration programs such as those in Alpine School District make teachers more efficient. Technology is helping us reach kids who may have struggled more in past years. If I can work in a field in which innovation is rewarded, I will count it as a blessing. However, we need to make sure that we don’t, in an effort to get rid of bad apples, prune away the fruitful branches of the tree.
Please contact me anytime. I would welcome you to our school or collaboration meetings, Senator.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705281102/Teachers-age-bias-lawsuit-is-settled.html
I do not understand the idea that teachers have not been involved in an ongoing evaluation and is part of the status quo. Teachers are evaluated every year based on intricately developed evaluations processes that are devised at the district level and serves the district agenda and aims of public education. Poor performing teachers are fired and teachers are constantly working on using best teaching practices and using data to make decisions about the way to improve student learning.
Also, performance pay will not improve public education. Teachers teach because they are skilled and talented. They love the teaching profession and offering them an incentive if they make students’ scores go higher would only encourage cheating and teaching to the test in some, but have no effect on most who teach to see students learn, grow, advance into careers and college and thank the teachers who helped to get them there. Teachers are rewarded by their successes in the classroom. If they were motivated by financial rewards, they simply would not have chosen teaching.
Senator Osmond,
While I support the purpose behind your proposal, I do not feel that it is a fair proposal for educators. I agree with Mr. Truesdell’s concerns. How does your bill protect teachers from harrassment? I am a first year teacher. I work at the school 11-12 hours a day trying my best to provide the students with a good education. They should not suffer because I am a novice. However, I have been discriminated against by other teachers and students’ parents because of my inexperience in a classroom. I have also seen parents harrass other teachers when their student is not doing exceptionally well in a class because the teacher is challenging the students to learn. These are good teachers who would be discriminated against and possibly fear for their jobs due to your bill. This is the adverse affect of what this proposal’s primary goal is. Removing due process of termination of employment from state standards is not fair to teachers, and I also feel it would make the right to due process appear unimportant to districts if the state does not encourage it.
I do support the idea of preformance pay, but I ask how is student performance assessed? Student performance should be assessed on an individual student basis rather than a class average. For example, I teach six middle school science classes, and one of those classes has six students with special needs in it. That class is one of the classes that I feel most proud of, and that I feel, is understanding and applying science principles exceptionally well. However, if one compares my classes’ average test scores, that class’s score is significantly lower than the other classes that do not have special needs students in them. Performance pay needs to take situations like these into account in order to be fair and just in evaluating teacher’s performance.
Thank you for your concern for education and your receptiveness to feedback. It is greatly appreciated.
Dear Senator–I appreciate the efforts you have made to improve education. I see that these proposals have been vastly improved since my first understanding of these concepts from the USEO’s public meeting earlier this September. I also appreciate your detailed descriptions of the pro’s and con’s. I have two concerns on which I would like to have more details: Teacher Contracts and Performance pay.
If Teacher contracts are up to 5 years, and if they can be “not renewed”, must there be a cause related to the locally controlled due process? Is the industry standard in contract based employment really as simple as “There is no problem with your work, we just don’t want you anymore”? I think that Educational Systems need to have a reason for not renewing contracts. Otherwise, those with higher pay could be let go for a continual parade of new graduates who are cheaper. This would actually work contrary to the weighted salary range proposal (#3).
Performance pay based on student results do not apply to some vital Federally required services: Special Education (already underfunded)including a wide variety of necessary services (Speech Language, School Psych, just to name a couple) would be completely outside the performance based on any portion of student standardized measures. Enforcing a 5% pay on student performance on standardized tests is in direct opposition to local control and is an example of a national trend to oversimplify the roles of those who make real differences everyday in the lives of many students. Enforcing this kind of system will divide school employees against each other, creating a “real teachers” against a new class of undervalued employees.
I will be in attendance at the public meeting tonight in Weber County, and hope to hear more details of how these inadequacies may be addressed.
Sincerely,
Andrew Owens
Senator Osmond,
Basing teacher pay on an end-of-level test will never be a fair way of assessing a teacher’s abilities. In my school many efforts are given to divide classes fairly, however, other factors come in to place. Students are moved because of parent requests, new students move in, while others move out. Looking at beginning of the year assessments with my team members shows a great descrepency in classroom abilities. One class has 12 below reading level at the beginning of the year, while another has 4. Even though the teacher with 12 below reading level is an incredible teacher, that puts in many hours of extra time for her students, her overall tests scores are most likely be lower than the teacher who starts out with a class of higher achievers. Is it fair to give one teacher higher pay over the other??
My daughter teaches at the two poorest high schools in the state. This is her second year teaching, and she is already discouraged and wants to change professions! She is a highly qualified, caring, wonderful teacher. What is the incentive
for wonderful teachers to teach in low economic areas?
Thank-you for your time!
These changes make perfect sense if you work in business or industry. Having graduated from the Marriott School of Management before deciding to enter the field of education, I can see the inherent common sense of these proposals. However, education is an entirely different situation from any other organization.
Instead of continuing to enforce changes from the outside, teachers need to be included in the decision-making. Human Resource management uses focus groups and inside research to make major positive change in organizations. As long as teachers’ opinions continue to make no difference in policy making, education will continue to suffer. Without elementary or secondary public-school teaching experience, there are things you simply cannot know. This is true in any organization. Before entering education, I worked in Training and Development at Motorola in Mesa, Arizona. The bosses included the production workers in the decision-making process. Many of these people hadn’t completed high school, yet their opinions were valued, their suggestions were analysed and many were implemented, with large gains in production and efficiency. Upper management wasn’t even aware of real problems that were hindering efficiency. Unless you have worked on a production line, you simply do not understand the obstacles.
Judging teachers according to student test scores is similar to judging doctors according to the health of their patients. Doctors may have motivated patients who listen and do as they are asked. They eat right and take necessary medication. However, other patients find it difficult and fail to follow doctor recommendations. Doctors also have different patient pools. If you judge all doctors according to the number of patients who can run a mile in ten minutes, you will soon have to fire those who deal with life-threatening diseases. If you judge doctors by the number of patients who die, you will soon have no doctors helping cancer or Aids patients.
Many teachers have a large number of students with special needs, be they second-language related, disability-related, or illness-related. Some schools are modern with air conditioning and heating that work. Some classrooms reach 80-90 degrees in the summer months. Some classes have 20 children, while others have 30. Some teachers work in schools with highly-motivated students and some work in schools in which half the students have changed before the end of the year. Some teachers have gifted students while others have a wider variety of ability levels. Each of these factors has a dramatic effect on student learning. (Try teaching students sitting on wrong-sized chairs, at broken desks, who are overheated and sweating profusely.) Throughout my years of teaching, no one has ever adequately addressed this obstacle to fairness in teacher performance pay. There is always a vague promise that such things will be “taken into consideration.”
Public schools are filled with highly-motivated, hard-working individuals. (You won’t last long if you aren’t that type of person.) There are always a few bad apples in any profession, but the problem in education has been highly exaggerated. We continue to add more to teachers’ responsibilities while ignoring other factors, such as physical facilities, parental support, student motivation, and available materials. More good would be done by making parents and students accountable for attendance and work than in giving teachers more pressure and more hoops to jump through. The current teacher burn-out rate is 3 years. In other words, most new teacher will quit before completing three years. When I started teaching, the burn-out rate was 5 years. Pretty soon we will have to offer incentives to get anyone to teach. Instead of making it harder for teachers, how about finding ways to make it easier?
I appreciate your concern for education and encourage you to seek more input from those in the field of education. Education could be dramatically imiproved if those “on the front lines” were heard.
Dear Senator Osmond,
I am a classified employee who works in a maintenance department for my local school district. I’ve been employed here for just about twelve years. I’ve really enjoyed my job and do the best job I can. I love where I live and feel good about working for and contributing to my community.
I’m concerned about the proposed legislation and I don’t see why there’s a need to change the present orderly termination act.
The present Act provides most classified employees with career status after three years. The proposed legislation would not replace this protection with any other statutory protection for classified employees. The proposal would eliminate the current due process rights for classified employees and prohibit school districts from entering into a collective bargaining agreement that establishes policies for dismissal of employees.
I believe that classified school employees should retain career status and due process protection because:
• Career status is not tenure; it is not lifetime employment; it is not a guarantee against termination.
• Career status simply means that a public employee may only be terminated for good cause, and that they are provided due process to challenge that cause.
• People expect our government, whether on the federal, state, or local level, to act fairly and equitably, and to treat all persons, including government employees, equally. Career status fulfills this expectation by protecting public employees from arbitrary and capricious government action.
• Classified school employees, like all public employees, are held to a higher standard than most private-sector employees.
We literally “work in a fishbowl” and the taxpaying public is ready to leap on any actual or perceived transgression as grounds to terminate or worse.
Classified employees, like all public school employees, must undergo periodic background checks as a condition of keeping their jobs.
They must report an arrest or a charge of criminal activity, and may be fired because of that whether or not they are ultimately proved guilty or innocent.
• Most classified employees, like almost all government employees, make less in pay than they could in the private sector. The protection of career status, the knowledge that they may only be fired for cause, and not on a whim or because they are less popular or accepted, is one of the few benefits a government employer can offer its employees in compensation for lower pay and the other negative aspects of public employment.
• Career status, like good benefits and pension plans, attracts and retains a higher quality employee than districts could hope to retain with pay alone. Not only do these quality employees create a better public education system, these employees typically live in their districts, contributing a stable and secure base of career employees that make for a better community.
Thank you for your service to the state of Utah. Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Matt Poulsen
Here! Here! Well stated. Thank you.
First of all thank you for asking for input before putting a bill before the legislature, it is a welcome open change in the legislative process. As a Republican delegate, precinct vice chair, and teacher of 16 years, I love the first prong of the proposal. The principle of the government closest to the people usually produces the best results, is one of the foundational principles of the Republican Party.
However, why the next three parts of the legislation? They all take away the local control of education and put it in the hands of the state office, legislatures, etc. To take power away from unions and then put it in higher governments hands doesn’t up hold Republican Principles. Let the Local School districts set the Contracts, Salary scales and Performance pay criteria for their own circumstances. Do not declare it by legislative edict or state office decree.
Each district has its own challenges and needs. It could be anything from poverty, immigrants, rural settings, to specific subject area needs. In my rural district, I am a level 4 math teacher. I was asked to teach government courses with my minor when the government teacher entered administration. Two younger teachers were also level 4 but didn’t have minors. Now if the state had said we value math teachers that would not have been the need of our district, but I would have had to take a pay cut to help my district out. Again giving more power to the districts is great but then mandating how they are to use that power is counter productive, in my opinion.
Senator Osmond,
I appreciate your willingness to listen to the educators voices. I am currently in my sixth year of teaching. I work in a title one school. I am very happy with my job and feel that I grow into a better teacher each year. Last week,I usually spend about 60 hours a week in my classroom inorder to input data and to prepare lesson plans that I hope will inspire my students.
I think that we all agree that good teaching is essential to the economic growth of our state and nation. I do not agree that your ideas will help us to achieve that goal. First, teachers are already evaluated each year.I set goals with my principal that I am expected to complete during the year. All teachers are required to continue their education. I have personally completed over 30 hours of training in addition to completing an ESL endorsement. Since the legslature cut 75 million dollars from my districts budget over the last two years much of our training opportunities have been eliminated. Menters who were there to help first year teachers succeed were abolished. Student loads into classes were enlarged. I began the year with 65 kindergarteners assigned to me. After the district posted a tax increase, we were able to hire a new part time teacher to help lower my classroom load to a more manageable 43.
Second, Your bill does nothing to address some real issues about teacher/principal conflicts. When I was hired by another district, as a first year teacher, I found myself in a crazy relationship with a pricipal who could not or would not take responsibilty for her part in the success of the classroom. I enterd the classroom,and found only chairs, tables and shelves. As aKindergarten teacher, I expected to see blocks, dolls, dishes, math manipulatives, books, and puzzles. There were no paints, pencils, crayons or paper. She explained to me that I would have a budget in the fall to purchase those things for my classroom. Unfortunatly, My class was to begin in 24 hours in June. Rather than setting up the room, I had to go shopping for the very basics. AS a newly graduated teacher, i did not have the funding to cover those needed supplies. The classroom budget she did eventually provide for me covered paper, pencils, crayons and other reusables that are common in early childhood classrooms. I did not cover anything else. I spent the rest of the year being yelled at in front of the children and other teachers for not having those items in my classroom. Providing classroom supplies should not be the responsibilty of the teacher. it was not a good year. In addition, I discovered that she had only taught for one year befor becoming a school psycologist. She really had no idea of what was required.
The classroom, I was asked to teach in had mold growing under the carpet. The paneling was chipped and splintering, The cork boards were so old that when I used them the staples and thumbtacks would fall out. I had west facing windows with no air conditioning. The classroom would sometimes exceeed 110 degrees during the summer. I found a dead mouse in my classroom under the file cabinet. When the custodian came to remove the critter she told me that I was lucky that it didn’t die in the heating system as there was no way to dispose of the mice who got trapped there. Teachers and children should not be working in classrooms that are have vermin or mold growing in them. I do not believe that your bill addresses this issue.
The third issue is teacher tenure.As a fairly new teacher, I look up to the vetran teachers who serve as an example to me. I can ask them for help of for teaching ideas. I am at a point now where I would like to begin work on a masters degree. I am afraid that the first teachers to lose their jobs will be those who went the distance, they improved their education, gained new skills and in the process became too expensive to keep. If a principal can fire a teacher without reason, she can and will get rid of the teachers that cost too much inorder to balance the budget in the school. How does your bill address this reality?
Fourth, How does your bill address the social economic and large influx of english language learners. Title one teachers deal with these issues everyday. Many children in my school have parents who work more than one job to provide the very basics for their families. Many of the parents are mothers who are supporting children on their own. They often do not have the time or energy to help their children at home. This means that our children begin school behind their wealthier cohorts and have a difficult time competeing. I could be the best teacher to ever teach and I could not remove their poverty. Families who struggle with the language have the added burden of helping their children in a language that is not their own. All of these parents love their children just as much as you love yours. They are doing their best. When you penalize teachers for their lower test scores in these schools, you do a disservice to the teachers and the children. When teachers are paid for their test scores, many who teach in title one schools will migrate to other non-title one schools in order to be considered for merit pay. That will leave our title one schools with the most inexperienced teachers to teach the children with the greatest need.
What I see happening is a push for a complete privatization of our schools. If so how will these schools be funded? If the parents must pay for the education of their children without the help of the state, many children will never be educated. If the state decides to supplement the tuition for any children, then the state has once again created a public school. I have also heard it suggested that all students should be homeschooled as they were when our constitution was formed. The wealthy were able to afford to send their children to school. The poor remained illiterate. Every year, there are children who return to the public school who have been home schooled. Often these children are two or more years behind their public schooled peers. Private schools do better, but then they can pick and chose their students. They can refuse to take on children with behavioral problems or learning problems or who might be disabled some way or other. Our public schools take every one and do our best to serve each child. Taking them where they are and striving to push them forward.
Your bill does not address the many overtime hours that teachers give just to meet the status quo. i said at the beginning that I spend about 60 hours a week in my classroom. I am not alone in the building. Many other teachers are working right along with me. These are volunteer hours that we are not paid for. I spend much of my summer volunteering hours as well. Lessons need to be revamped. materials need to be refurbished and i need to take classes so that I can remain current on the best practices for the classroom. Teachers are not paid for these hours either. And they often pay for the refurbishing of materials with their own money.
Last year, when my school district was asking for a tax increase to meet its opperating costs, I heard one woman yell that teachers should be happy. They have good paying jobs. This is true, we have a great job. But money is not the issue for me or for many of my colleagues. it is respect. I find that I am expected to function like a CEO, but that i have the autonomy and respect of the company’s janitor. I am not asking for much. I am asking for fairness in compensation fairness in evaluation and fairness in my right to work without fear of arbitrary dismissal.
I appreciate your willingness to listen to my concerns. Education has always been complicated. There are no easy solutions to our problems in education, but I do believe that there will be no solutions if teacher remain the scape goat of all our problems. We are on the front lines. we really see what is happening to our children. Often we are their only voice. You need to include us in any discussion that relates to education. We are the ones who care. We put our lives into the education of our children and we deserve at least that much respect!
Dear Senator Osmond,
I am a pre-k teacher who works with students with a vast array of abilities. In my over eight years of experience I have noted that in no other sector of special education is there a greater turn over. In fact, most employees struggle to work more than a year within the pre-k field (i.e. general education, hearing impaired education, or special education). While your proposal, including merit based pay, sounds initially appealing I am concerned that there are many flaws which may cause tax payers additional burdens, demean those with experience/ those who do not fit within the defined classifications of your proposal, and ultimately hurt the very students that it is intended to help.
The legal precariousness of your proposal is astounding! Due process is required under the law and is equally applied to all educators under the current system. If due process is controlled at the local level, a legally inexperienced District may inadvertently deny or eliminate principles of this process; a serious legal quandary. An additional legal concern would be the monetary ramifications–many Districts could be sued over perceptions that an employee was unfairly treated and would have been better treated in a neighboring District or that due process was not provided. When Districts are sued, money that would be used to support and enhance education is lost.
The proposal is not clear about how educational professionals who work in reading, speech, pre-k, physical education, special education, hearing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, adult education, vision, etc. would be treated. It also fails to recognize that many of the above educational professionals share students with other fellow educators and do not have standardized test measures which would allow educator efficacy to be measured. The proposal further fails to consider student factors (i.e. social economic status, language, gender, race, cultural knowledge, etc.) and how these factors affect the results of standardized measures.
I believe that many educators feel the current proposal demonstrates an underlying lack of appreciation for educator experience. With teaching experience often comes better ways of educating. For instance, educators have been able to prune out poor teaching practices and replace these with by more efficacious ones. Experienced educators often have ways of dealing with behavior that support students learning to manage and take control of their lives and foster good decision making, while younger educators frequently struggle in this area. Younger educators also struggle to provide lessons that meet all student needs as I have noted in coaching other new educators. I believe that experienced educators should be given the opportunity to have renewable contracts based upon a history of excellent performance–they have proven their dedication to students, demonstrated student results over time, and enhanced parent, community, and student communications/relations. The above is not intended to state that a process to eliminate poor educators should not be in place. I believe policies should continue to be in place. I also believe that educators should be immediately terminated for serious violations of contact including ethics violation. I further believe that educators with evaluations of needed improvement after being given support and tools to meet expectations and still not meeting these expectations should be terminated.
Funding is also an enormous concern. Many education laws are not funded as outlined–the result is that teachers often meet the difference for the public. Many educators within my local elementary school pay over $6,000 in their own funds for pencils, school books, curricular materials, etc. I ask where will the funding for performance based pay come from, and can a guarantee is to be placed to ensure the legislation is funded.
I applaud efforts to ensure that students receive the best education possible within the public education system. Thank you senator for attempting to ensure that quality educators are available for all students, for listening to educator concerns, and trying to reform this legislation so that it will adequately meet student needs/educator needs. I believe that this legislation has a way to go before it can meet these needs but look forward to continued discussion that will enhance student growth and experience.
Thank you,
Nathan Fidler
Pre-K General Educator, Special Educator, and Teacher of the Hearing Impaired
Why are all the problems in education always blamed on teachers? This legislation proposition does nothing but hurt the status of teachers who are already doing their best. It does nothing more than justify saving money by paying teachers less and letting teachers go.
Does this proposition:
reduce my class size….. No 34-45 kids
Provide teachers with more training…….No
Improve School infrastructure………No
Provide money for instructional materials and supplies……..no
Will it hurt the moral of teachers who work hard and care for Utah’s children….Yes
Parents, teachers and District officials who know the needs of their community should be making decisions that affect the lives of Utah students and teachers, not politicians seeking to cut the state budget. Public education is not a corporation. How can politicians determine merit pay or what makes a teacher great.
Stephen G. Boehme
Senator Osmond–I am so grateful to you for your willingness to consider the comments of educators. I will try to make my comments concise, but will be anxious to pursue a dialogue with you on Tuesday evening.
1- I appreciate the fact that your work seems well-intentioned. I sense no maliciousness in your proposed legislation.
2- As a veteran teacher (29 years) I am very uncomfortable letting districts create their own termination policies with no guidance from the state in terms of orderly termination. Why not keep the orderly termination piece in place, ensuring that legal protections are in place, and let districts develop detailed policies from there.
3- Teacher evaluation/pay is a tricky business. In my experience, 2 different principals may evaluate the same teacher in completely different ways, despite the fact that they use the same evaluation instrument. Some principals spend a lot of time in classrooms and have a good idea of what’s happening in a building. They take evaluation seriously and make the time to genuinely mentor their teachers through the evaluation process. Other principals visit classrooms rarely, spend 30-40 minutes on an evaluation, and tell you you’re great. That’s it. Linking dollars to evaluation/performance may ultimately turn into the same thing that the infamous “Career Ladder” program did: everyone in the education community scrambling to find a way to equally divide a small bit of money among many deserving individuals. You see, teacher “A” may really connect with hard-to-reach kids, while teacher “B” inspires kids with innovative projects. Meanwhile, teacher “C” may work miracles with young readers. Which of these teachers deserves a bonus over the others? How will you compare what a kindergarten teacher does with what a high school teacher does? What makes a math teacher more valuable than a home ec. or a band teacher? Are we to focus on just the basics, or is the whole child our concern? The idea of paying teachers different base salaries based on their subject area suggests that we, as a society, value certain subjects over others. Taken a step further, it assumes that we value accountants/scientists more than homemakers or firemen. Should we totally abandon art, music, PE and social studies because they are not tested? The issues are much more complex than many realize. (Not to mention the fact that current funding doesn’t begin to support the idea of pay–for-performance!)
4- Orderly termination procedures are already on the books (in my district, and I assume in others as well). Many times principals simply are reluctant to commit to the process for a variety of reasons. Eliminating job security and crushing teacher morale across the state is not the appropriate response to the problem of poorly performing teachers.
5- Finally, teachers in general are well-intentioned, dedicated and hard-working. When they are not successful, whether it be with a particular student or an entire class, it is generally not due to lack of effort. Unfortunately, many educators fly through the day reacting to situations. They have limited or no preparation time, professional inservice, or collaboration time, and they often put professional reflection at the end of the list of things to do in a busy classroom. If improving educational outcomes is the ultimate goal of any legislation affecting public schools, I believe educators need to be involved in the crafting of meaningful improvements. We have so many ideas about how to increase student performance and parent satisfaction in public schools! So again, thank you for including teacher insights in this process.
Senator Osmond,
Thank you so much for clearly outlining the proposed education legislation and seeking public input, it is sincerely appreciated.
Currently I am a new teacher in high school that has a tremendously diverse, at-risk, AND truly impressive student body and faculty. Although I have thoughts on all the points within the bill I would just like to comment on the last two based on my limited experience.
The proposed salary ranges and performance based pay proposals seem to be in direct conflict with one another and the direction education should be headed towards, which is to reflect the cross-curricular experiences that occur every day in the post-high school world. Even in your own risk assessment,you recognize that both proposals, if adopted, could be more divisive within faculties and model a lack of recognition for the importance of every faculty member and their discipline.
In my teacher training I was taught to support the core subject areas in my elective classes and seek cross-curricular and collaborative experiences because the world outside education is indeed interdisciplinary. With that said, I beleive we must model that and that those proposals diminish the value of a comprehensive education that teaches collaboration, connections, and alternative perspectives to problem solving.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Andrea Heidinger
Senator Osmond,
I appreciate that you are asking for responses from educators. I hope you are open to our opinion as well. There has been much negative publicity about teachers and teacher associations across the country of late. I have taught in the Washington County School District for 15 years. I am impressed everyday by the capable, dedicated teachers I work with. They work late hours and weekends, not because they make one more dime…but because they are committed to their students and profession. The problems with rediculous tenure for lazy teachers and unions that have run amuck are NOT HERE IN UTAH. Don’t use our public schools as pawns in making a political statement! We have been hurt enough by cuts in funding and No Child Left Behind impossible standards. Your bill opens too many areas which could hurt, not help our schools.
Sincerely,
Ellen Bennett
I also appreciate your willingness to receive feedback on this issue. It is nice to have a voice in the process.
There are several concerns I have, most of them have been stated above. Maybe a “like” or “dislike” button on the comments could save some of the replication of the ideas.
One of my main concerns is the “unintended consequences” of implementing your proposal. The most obvious is that districts that seem to have an adversarial relationship with the teachers will use this as an opportunity to balance their budgets on the backs of more experienced teachers. “Expensive” teachers will be dismissed without cause. I am an experienced teacher with multiple degrees. I would be on the chopping block since you could easily hire two teachers for the same rate. Also, districts and the State will use this to help save money with retirement issues. I would assume that most teachers would never actually become vested in the system since it is more economical to let them go without cause before they reach that level.
Not to sound too cynical, but in some districts quality of the teacher is not well respected. Some large districts see teachers as replaceable regardless of ability. As other posts have mentioned, I too have seen teachers receive awards one year and be released within a couple of years.
Again, thank you for your time.
Doug, thanks for this suggestion. I just found a new plugin for the blog that enables a “like” and “dislike” function for comments. If you get a chance to try it out, let me know what you think. -Elizabeth Ziegler, USOE Social Media Specialist and UtahPublicEducation.org administrator.
Senator Osmond,
Thank you for asking for feedback on your proposal. I agree with the other comments posted and have a question. I have heard a lot of rhetoric lately about concerns that bad teachers are hired and then cannot be let go because of policies in place that protect them. I have not heard any statistics stating how often this is so. What percentage of teachers currently teaching are “bad teachers”? Is this really a huge concern in our state? How will you know if your proposal (if passed) is making a difference in this area?
I am also concerned about the equity of performance pay and about fixed contracts instead of guarantee of employment. Others have voiced the same concerns much more eloquently that I could. I respectfully ask that we keep the dialogue on these issues open and do not make any hasty decisions that could severely affect the future of education in our state.
This would be a tough question to answer because it is often difficult to pinpoint what or who a bad teacher is. Is a bad teacher someone who has consistently low scores as a result of variables beyond his or her control. Is a bad teacher the one who spends little time planning and inspires his students to be all they can be. If I ask a group of students to tell me who are the good teachers and who are the bad teachers, they would come up with different responses. This is what makes performance pay in education so impractical.
Senator Osmond,
I agree that your bill is a “slap” in the face of teachers. We are trying our best to educated today’s children, many who are very apathetic, and rude (Middle School) to their teachers. Performance pay would cause many hard feelings between teachers. Teachers would no longer want lower end children in their classes, as these students would lower class performance. Teachers are expected to keep up on their own continued education (college), new endorsements, etc. that cost thousands of dollars, and time away from family, all at their own expense. Almost no other profession would required you to receive extra training at your on time and expense, for so little in return. We are always being told by the government, that we are “not highly qualified.” So, I see this as just a another slap in the face of Utah teachers. Please spend one week as a substitute teacher before you start meddling with the schools. So few people really know what public schools are like today. Again, please go sub for one or two days. I dare you.
My biggest problem with this proposal, being an art teacher, is the devaluation of the subject I teach by many. With the pay based on the difficulty of the position to fill, as well as the subject itself, and how difficult it is perceived to be to teach by others, I can see how this legislation can be negative for me. I would be very frustrated to see a science teacher, who does not do as much for the school and students as I do, get paid so much more than I do, just because the job is harder to fill, or “more important” than mine. Or to see art teachers loose their positions because the particular principal does not value art as highly as they should. If the pay was based solely on evaluations this law might be a bit more fair, but evaluations are so much of an opinion, which can be biased very easily. I have had principals that could not form coherent sentences and were obviously not good at teaching, as evident in the faculty meetings. For them to evaluate me and tell if I were a good teacher or not and should be paid less or more, would be ridiculous. I have never had anything but a good evaluation, but the evaluator has never stayed very long to see everything I do. But this legislation is not based on evaluation alone, but on the position as well.
This model seems like a model that would be used in a corporate or business setting, but not one that would be good for an education setting. There are too many intricacies in education that do not apply to the business world. There may be parts of this proposal that sound good, but I am totally against it because my position is too often devalued, though it is one that contributes to the student’s overall education in every subject and gives them more experience in hands on thinking than many other subjects. There are just not enough checks and balances to protect good teachers.
These are only part of my thoughts about this plan that have not been considered. I do not see it working for the benefit of teachers.
Senator Osmond,
I appreciate the opportunity to comment on your proposed changes and after reading the comments posted on here by the majority of readers I don’t have anything to add. Like others I am concerned about the evaluation process changing when the the current process in place would work if only it was used. I have yet to meet a teacher’s union representative who didn’t want their colleagues to become as good a teacher as possible and that if they weren’t getting the job done then they should be removed after due process. So why are administrators afraid to do their jobs?
I am all in favor of teachers being judged by test scores (as one criteria). However, if a student rarely attends then why is that teacher forced to include that student’s scores (even if they don’t take the test) in their classroom evaluation? I think if a student misses more than 20% of a class then if they take the test their scores should be tossed out, good or bad. Let only those student’s who attend more than 80% of the time take their end of year CRT’s and have those scores used as part of the classroom evaluation. Students who don’t pass the CRT test don’t advance to the next grade level until they do (unless they are on a special education IEP) and remediation should be offered in the summer to help those students pass the test so that they can move on to the next grade level.
Thank you for your time sir.
Ed Murrell
Senator Osmond, Terms such as “lower end students” are insulting and indicate an expectation of failure. This is something parents of special needs students face every day. My concern is that the first teachers whose contracts won’t be renewed are those who stand up for what’s right and try to make sure the disabled student’s education is not ‘dumbed down’ o push them out of the system, unprepard, as soon as possible while artifically inflating graduation rates.
Senator Osmond,
I would like you to answer two questions before you proceed with the presentation of your bill before the legislature. As a graduate student I have conducted scholarly research in the area of permformance/merit pay. My first question is this: History has shown that performance pay has rarely been effective(in terms of increasing student performance) How is your current plan any different from the hundereds of failed approaches in the past? And is it not a faux pas to cut teacher salaries by 5%(in a already low paying state) and expect to bring in some of the best and brightest educators? To my estimates your 5% performance pay increase would only bring in an extra $1,500 more a year for a first year starting teacher. This is not a guarantee remember!
Sen Osmond,
Thank you for giving us a voice in his process. This I believe is a first. The teacher morale in this state is already at an all time low. I have had so many teachers ask me ” Why does the legislature hate us.” I have no answer to this question.
I believe the motto of the current legislature is ” The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Just give us the support we need to do this tough job.
Thnaks
Sen. Osmond,
I’m really thankful for your service in the state sentate and your willingness to tackle issues like the ones faced in education.
I just want to be really brief and to the point. First, by giving local districts full control of termination policy is dangerous because of the risk of bias being masked as policy. I know many administrators on the local level that would use this power for their own gains, peace of mind, and predudice. It is not a well known reality but a reality nonetheless. Second, weakening union strength by elimating collective bargaining (which would decrease membership as I’m sure you know) would leave teachers more open to unjust attacks. Yes, some teachers need a better system of checking to make sure they do their job well. But, without a strong union to back unfair assaults on good teachers, there is no longer a system of balance and checks in place. It would leave too much power to certain individuals.
Thanks for your time,
Danny Greene
Senator Osmond,
I am heartened to see that a new legislator is taking the time to listen and learn from constituents and not just from powerful cronies on Capitol Hill who tend to take people like you under their wing, only to hand them controversial and ultimately divisive pieces of legislation under the guise of helping them out. You seem to be unwilling to fall for that. As I’m sure you are finding in your public meetings, your bill is extremely broad and opens up a long list of drastic changes to many processes and protections that teachers hold dear. Processes and protections, incidentally, that have worked well and don’t need to be thrown out. As well intentioned as you might be about “helping” public education, this bill has the potential to decimate our profession and ultimately the public school system. Once it hits a committee and then the floor, it is out of your hands. It can be amended to look nothing like what you intended, but very much like what someone else planned all along. Please be careful, very careful, as you go down this path.
You mentioned at the Weber meeting that the public has a perception that there are many “bad teachers” and that there is no way to get rid of them. That is simply not true and is, in my opinion, a result of concerted efforts on the part of privatization zealots to discredit the system they would like to see fail. I have been immersed in this private vs. public fight for more than a decade and while the rhetoric changes, the players never do.
Do we have teachers in our classrooms that aren’t at the top of their game? Yes. Do we have teachers who probably are not in the right profession? Yes. Are there teachers who should be counseled out of education? Sure. Are Utah classrooms full of these people who are holding children hostage and using the “union” to prevent principals from doing their job? NO. But if you want vouchers and private schools paid with public money and you have to compete with Utah’s quality public schools, you have to identify an enemy. You have to discredit in people’s minds the very system of education that has successfully educated most of Utah’s children. So, teachers and the “union” become the whipping boy.
When competent administrators work with UniServ Directors from UEA to assure that everyone has a reasonable chance to improve and a fair process by which they can be removed, we can and do see teachers leave the profession. We have a system in place, that can successfully identify, remediate and/or eventually terminate those who need to improve. Quality educators, more than anyone, do not want poor ones teaching down the hall. We are proud of our work and our profession and are most often the first ones to realize that something must be done. We need principals who are willing to work with us to police our own ranks.
Teachers in Utah’s classrooms are NOT representative of the “status quo” – whatever that is. They have more and more legislative mandates shoved down their throats every year. Change this. Implement that. Test this. Never mind that. Do it this way…no that way…no, now this way. A bill passes and in order to be sure they comply, the State Board adds a few more particulars. then the people in the State office write rules to comply. Then the districts, in order to comply to the USOE rules, add a few more. Now the principals don’t want to do anything wrong, so they add their own interpretation and the poor teachers are the ones trying to sort it all out, do the paperwork, attend the meetings, serve on the committees, implement new curriculum, put up the right posters, use the correct new terminology, and still be expected to teach and raise test scores for every child. If any business faced the same micromanagement from government there would be an outcry from the business community that we were strangling them. Well, welcome to our world!
Senator Osmond, keep doing what you’re doing. You are on the right path. Your intentions seem sincere. But remember when your ideas and ideals are snatched away from you and morphed into a bill to further hamstring public education, teachers, and UEA members in particular – one that looks nothing like what you planned, that it will be teachers and ultimately the students in our overcrowded and underfunded classrooms, not you, who pay the price.
Respectfully,
Pat Rusk
Dear Senator Osmond, Thank you for soliciting this input. I believe your proposed legislation, as currently written, would have some unintended consequences.
I agree with your stated intention “to reduce and decentralize state control over education employment and to further empower local control in the hands of our school districts,” “to reinforce that ‘one-size does not fit all’”. The proposed legislation would work against this stated intention, by banning certain practices. Proposed section 53A-8a-301, line (2) reads, “A school board may not enter into a collective bargaining agreement with an educator’s employee association or union that establishes policies or procedures for the dismissal of an educator.” This is precisely the kind of one-size-fits-all state regulation that you say you are against. Let local boards establish their own procedures; don’t tie their hands. If a small school district finds it helpful to collaborate with the teachers’ association in establishing guidelines for dismissal, why would the state want to prohibit that?
Part 4, performance pay, seems to be intended to tie teacher effectiveness to salaries – a noble goal. Yet part 2, establishing an end-point to teacher contracts, has the opposite effect. Right now, a teacher can be dismissed if they are shown to be ineffective, but under your proposal, a teacher could be non-renewed for any reason. Why shouldn’t teacher employment be tied to teacher effectiveness? Do we really want to let our effective teachers go?
I am concerned about the removal of the “Orderly Termination Act” from our state laws. I do not see how it will improve education if an educator feels that their employment can be terminated without cause. As it stands now every educator knows that they can be terminated for a variety of causes. If you want to remove this Act to enable District to create their own due process procedure that is fine, but the addition of fixed contracts instead of Guarantee of continued employment seems to negate the due process part. What is the point of due process if your contract will be terminated at the end of a short duration anyway.
I have, of course, worked in private business and my husband has worked in other areas of government work. In both of these instances there is an expectation of continued employment. Yes you can be terminated, as can educators, but you didn’t go to work knowing that in a year or six months your “contract” would be up and you would either have to renegotiate or find that you had been terminated. The “government” and private employers know that having to worry about keeping your job based on whether your supervisor “liked” you, would not help workplace morale nor is it an effective way to run a business. The idea of continued employment is merely the fact that as long as you are doing your job and passing evaluations etc. you have a job.
I would like to address the issue of Salary ranges. If you are familiar with government pay scales they basically have steps and lanes. You can be a GS-9 with a range of salary that accounts for years of service. Education already has a similar salary schedule. We have educator scales and administrator scales. It is based on education level and years of experience which you say in your explanation are fine. You would like what discipline you teach and where you teach to affect the salary range. I remember when I was in school and districts did differentiate based on working on “east” or “west” side of the district and what “subject” you taught. This was very divisive to the workplace and caused no end of conflict within the district for transfers etc. The salary schedule was created through collective bargaining between districts and teachers to end this type of divisiveness. Why would we want to go backwards in this area?
Employees and employers working together to improve the workplace is the key to our economy which has only begun to see a shut down when these plans began to be taken away.
I would like to see this legislation pulled.
Susen Zobel
GEA President
After years of public education as intended by the founding father’s of our nation, why is that system now under attack. Of course things have changed in our world since the founding fathers, but nontheless public education in America has produced remarkable people and created a world of innovation. Just look at Mr. Jobs from Apple, or Bill Gates, for example.
Seventeen years ago I became a teacher. This career followed years of other employment and a few years as a stay-at-home mother. I am now 60 and have loved being a teacher. However, although I hold a master’s degree and many endorsements, my education and training have not been respected nor has my contribution been valued. Now whatever bargaining chips I do have are about to be taken from me, further devaluing my expertise. It is a falacy that anyone can teach. It takes a unique personality to keep 36 6th graders, as I have this school year, functioning and learning each day.
Public education is not the enemy.
Sen. Osmond,
My name is Holly and I am not only one of your constituents, but I am also a proud teacher in Granite School District. I work at a Title One school and have a class size of 30 students.
When I first heard about your proposed legislation, I felt not only angry, but outraged to have yet another publicly elected official discredit and slap the face of the teachers in his state. Then I heard that you were actually asking for teacher input on this proposal and I was shocked. In the history of teaching in this state, I have yet to have a representative ask my opinion on a piece of legislation that directly impacted my career. So first and foremost, thank you for hearing us out. Too many times people speak on behalf of a subject they know very little about and it gets maddening.
As for your bill, the message you are sending out is a slap in the face of all of the educators in our state who have stayed strong with you through this difficult economy. We have dealt with resources continually being taken away due to budget cuts, we have dealt with a continual rise in our insurance premiums (like everyone else), we have watched more and more things be dumped onto our plates without compensation, and we have watched, repeatedly, as our own state launches attack after attack against Utah’s teachers and the public education system.
Teachers who work in my district are not safe in their position. If they have a poor evaluation, from a system we already have in place, they are given resources to rectify the problem. If the problem continues, then steps are taken to have the teacher terminated. I have seen this process work with a couple of different teachers and it has been not only successful, but it allows for teachers to choose their own path: fix the problem or lose your position. This is not tenure, this is due process. It allows for teachers to have a chance to improve. This chance to improve is available in almost every single career, so I do not see why it is such a huge abomination when a teacher wants the same courtesy. This also protects individuals from administrators whom they have a personality conflict with and from being let go “just because.”
Merit pay is the other major complaint I have against your proposal. While I am a teacher who is not scared of merit pay, I am a teacher who would rather have educators in charge of creating a system to reward those teachers who go above and beyond their call of duty, or just simply make progress with their students. If merit pay is based solely on my CRT/AYP scores, I do not want to teach in a Title One school. I choose to teach here because I have a very rewarding career and I work with kids who really need me in their lives. They may not make progress that most people would say is “good enough” but they do make progress. I am challenged every day by my students and I hope that I am giving them the same in return. I have a class that is 75% ELL, with six of my students receiving resource services, and the majority of them live in poverty. Compared to an east side school, I will never have amazing test scores nor will I do well enough to make up the 5% of my salary that you are proposing be based upon my test scores, but I see growth. My kids work hard to show me what they can do. I would hate to see teachers like me leave a school like mine, where we are so needed, because someone suggested merit pay.
Bills that we do need to see on Capitol Hill this coming session are bills that provide us with competitive salaries so we can attract the brightest and the best teachers. We need bills that would prohibit education becoming a way for others to make a financial gain. We need bills that would help us provide our students with the resources and supplies they need to be successful students and members of our society. We need specialists and counselors and outreach programs so we can impact every student. These are the things that have been cut over the last four years and those are the things we need back so we can start fairly competing with charter schools.
I very much appreciate that you are gathering comments from teachers. This is a step in the right direction and a step that will get you much support from educators across this state. Hopefully, before putting this bill forward, you will address some of the issues I have seen repeatedly on your page and try to figure out ways that you can help public education instead of further hindering its potential to be great.
Sen. Osmond, you are more than welcome to come into my classroom anytime to see what I and my wonderful teaching partners do at our school. We work hard and get very little in return. Please don’t be another representative that attacks public education. Stand with us and make us a stronger, better career path.
Thank you for your time.
Holly Slade
Representative Osmond,
I would like to state upfront that my view is somewhat unique compared to other educators. I had a successful fifteen year business career working for several major companies from the pharmaceutical sales to media and technology. I worked for 6 years as both a Senior Program Manager and a Director for AOL/Time Warner. I left this career voluntarily in 2002 of my own free will and obtained a job in education after obtaining a dual license in both secondary and elementary education. With that, I want to share my opinions of your current proposals.
First in term of career status, I highly recommend you leave it in place. Your proposal will not make it any easier to get rid of teachers because just as in business, in this case a large business (a school district) you still have to follow a set of procedures that allow the employee (teacher in this case) to improve their performance. Failure to do so results in a wrongful termination suit, even in a right to work state. Your proposal will increase the amount of time district HR’s and administrators must do even if they do not renew a contract at five years. To avoid any possible litigation based on age, race, or other areas that pertain to discrimination, the principal will have to document the poor performance of any teachers targeted for non-renewal. Since the same burden will exist, I wouldn’t change the law. Often by trying to do the right thing for good reasons, we make things harder. No change to career status.
As an alternative though I would make each teacher every other renewal provide a portfolio to both the district representative and to the state that show the performance of the teacher over the last five years. This should include at least three filmed sessions of the teacher teaching. The teacher then presents to the principal or assistant principal or to an administrative committee in person their portfolio and reason why their license should be renewed. The portfolio should include such things as a sample of student products, criterion based test results and improvements made by individual students and classes or endorsements taken to improve themselves as educators and how they applied that learning into the classroom. This allows for educators to continue to receive endorsements and continuing education, while removing it from lane changes. I would then have the teacher receive input as Does Not Meet, Meets or Exceeds and grant them their next license for five years if they achieve the Meets or Exceeds. If we are going to use standards, these need to be reduce to the five main things that we want educators to be and do in the classroom. Anything else is just superfluous to their job.
Next, salary steps and lane changes replaced by merit pay. I have no problem with the removal of lane changes and making it part of re-license per my suggestion above. To me that makes sense. Next, salary steps. I propose removing the salary steps and putting in place a higher base pay to beginning educators and a merit pay based on either one or two ways. First, don’t base it on the individual educator. Schools differ from business because of the talents and skills of teachers and of the students (kids) they teach. I teach at a borderline school with some difficult challenges in terms of kids. Some teachers are very successful working with these students while others are successful working with other type of students. If you pay each teacher based on the performance of the students, parents and administrators, many experience educators will leave the borderline to Title 1 Schools and move to better SES (Social Economic Status) schools. Why? Because it secures their future. So a merit pay should be based on how well a school improves or meets certain goals and then the pot is divided equally to the staff or it is earned by the school and broken out by the performance of the grade levels. I am for the last one. Why? It promotes collaboration and teaming among the grade level and the schools. I know based on my business experience, that when the bonus is earned through teamwork, when teamwork is needed to succeed, it works. Education is not like real estate or my previous experience in business. Teamwork and collaboration is essential for success for it needs to be rewarded via the merit pay. An individual bonus will not foster cooperation on the grade level and in the school, dividing and forcing competition. We don’t want that spirit when we are dealing with the education future of the children of this wonderful state.
So to summarize, I highly recommend that we keep the career status in place with a modification to make the re-license procedure based on a portfolio that the teacher puts together. If the portfolio rates as a meets to exceeds, a new five year license is granted. If a Does Not Meet is given, the teaching license is lost and the teacher is not allowed in the classroom. A status can be given to a teacher to improve on a provisional license where they have to show via a annual portfolio that they are at the meets or exceeds level. If after a one year trial there is no improvement, as an old business colleague stated, “It’s time to pack up and find another career more suited for them.” Due Process remains as does the working with the Union. We don’t need a state law to do away with collective bargaining. The Ogden District showed that a District can determine if they want to do that or not and it is a hit on morale.
Finally merit pay must be a collaborative based incentive. Education varies from business in that you truly want to motivate and reward for teaming. Successful collaboration means success for the grade level and that will result in success for the schools. I’ll be honest, a $2000 annual incentive isn’t motivation because after taxes and deductions, your looking at about $1000. All that work for $1000 to say $1500? You want a bonus talk to me about $20,000 and stock options and that is not going to happen in the state. Give a pot to a school based on the risk of the school. The more at risk schools can earn a higher pot of merit pay than those having less risk. If the school makes certain goals like meets or exceeds for communication with parents, and performance based tests then the schools earns their merit pay. Then this is broken down by the performance of each grade level and the improvement measure by individual students (yes, we do measure individual students progress year after year) so each grade level earns an share of the merit pay. I say based on individual student performance because you may teach fifth grade and have a student reading at a second grade level, say 2.2 and at the end of the year, be reading at a third grade level, say 3.5. That is tremendous progress for that student and should be rewarded.
Anyway, those are a couple of my suggestions. I am not against seeing things change, but to change just to change or to change because we think it is a good thing isn’t always the best. I would recommend reviewing and studying this for a year and then introducing the bill. If your intent on moving forward, then some changes need to be made that show a true understanding of education at the school level in the real world today, not from those who perhaps haven’t been in the classroom for a long time. Just my opinion and my two cents. Thomas Paine once wrote a book at a critical time in our history during the Revolution called “Common Sense.” It is my hope that common sense prevails with these topics of discussion and not just political ideology. I look forward to hearing from you and how you intend to proceed.
Best and safe travels,
LE
Dear Senator Osmond,
I appreciate your willingness to listen to educator concerns regarding your proposed legislation. First, let me say that I concur with Pat Rusk’s earlier comments. I have a few of my own to add as well.
I have been teaching in Salt Lake City School District since 1994. During that time I have taught every grade level from K-6, taught regular education and bilingual education and worked as a literacy coach and a vice principal. I recently chose to continue my efforts in a classroom of 31 fourth grade students in a title 1 school. Since 1994 I furthered my education and earned endorsements in the areas of technology, reading, and English as a Second Language. I earned a masters degree in education and my administrative license. I specifically chose to work in a school district in which I could positively impact families of second language learners and advocate for them. By so doing, I understood that the students I would teach may not make academic gains as quickly as those students who did not have language or serious poverty issues. But, I would do everything in my power to accelarate the process. I understood when I made “career status” that it was a guarantee of employment AS LONG AS I had “professional performance” evaluations, that I was ethical in my profession, and that I taught the core curriculum to students using best teaching practices. I have never felt that I had “a free ride” in my employment. As a former administrator I know that there are policies and procedures in place to effectively terminate employees who do not merit “professional performance” and I have been one to follow those procedures, limited as it was. There ARE checks and balances in place.
I found your comment interesting, “in our current economic reality, there is a growing public sentiment that no public employee should have an expectation or a guarantee of continued employment when private employees have no such benefit.” What I infer from this statement is that if it were not for our current economic reality, this would not be a discussion point right now. This leads me to believe that the goal here is not to “reward” high performing teachers, but rather to figure out a way to find more education dollars. Because of the financial sacrifices I have made in furthering my education, I would be one of the first to go without my career status and due process. You could hire two of me for the price of one. Before I became an educator I worked in the private sector for 10 years. Yes, it is true that for most people in the private sector, they do not have the benefit of an expectation of continued employment. However what they do have are amazing health care plans compared to the ones I have had in education, regular bonuses, lunches on occasion that THEY don’t need to pay for, luxurious conferences, and termination benefits you will not see in education EVER. I’ve seen people in the private sector paid a year’s salary or more when they were terminated. I am also convinced that educators have higher education levels on average. However, one thing we have in common is that WE BOTH KNEW WHAT OUR CONTRACT WAS AT THE TIME WE SIGNED IT. Imagine telling someone in the private sector that you are going to make it against the law to fulfill the contract they signed up for AND not pay them severance pay when you decide to terminate them. Ten years is not enough for career educators who still have 15 to 20 years left before retirement. The “opt out” stipulation seems to say to me that there will be lower salaries planned for educators and they won’t be able to “afford” career status educators who also make great gains to give them additional merit pay. This merit pay appears to be camoflauged reduction in pay to appear like a bonus if you get it at the end.
By imposing a law regarding new salary ranges, will I end up losing my livelihood, my home, my retirement by accepting a salary that could feasibly be half of what it is now? My husband left the private sector several years ago to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of students by teaching. We already gave up that higher salary and retirement benefits then. Should we have just stayed in the private sector? Why are we being punished for choosing lower salaries to educate our future generations? Should these stipulations be applied ACROSS THE BOARD to EVERY CHARTER SCHOOL, PUBLIC EMPLOYEE, JUDGE, POLICE OFFICERS, AND ANYONE RECEIVING GOVERNMENT FUNDS?
I also find it interesting that this “growing sentiment” is approached by deciding to implement legislation rather than by trying to understand why this is happening. What is reported in the media can be skewed however one wants to skew it. If I have a student who is a second language learner and “he” made two years of progress in one year, this progress would not be seen in the media because all that would be reported was whether he made AYP and passed his CRT for the year. If he is a fifth grader and was learning English, he still would not test well this year at 5th grade regardless of the progress he made. The “transfer” of content knowledge might not happen for several more years according to second language research. His teacher would be a failing teacher and with enough of these issues, it would be a failing school. If this legislation goes through, sign me up for the East side, upper income, English speaking community that doesn’t need much help or assistance from me. I can teach Spanish after school to English speaking students instead of communicating with parents in Spanish about their children’s academic progress. I furthered my education in many areas to assist the neediest of populations and it appears I will be punished for doing so.
It also appears that I would be receiving a 5% cut in pay if I didn’t make progress in the way that it will be measured, but instead go to a teacher that will receive my wage as “merit pay”. This situation is so much more complex than even the legislation that is attempting to solve academic progress is promoting. Right now I have 31 students. Some teachers in my school have 20 students. In the future will we have to have split grade levels to ensure that every teacher has the same number of students in a class, the same number of special education students, the same number of distribution of English and English as a second language speakers, etc. in order that when we are evaluated (competing against the teachers we teach with) it is a fair evaluation? Will we have to inform parents that “no, you have no input which classroom your child attends regardless of the needs, because it has to be a fair evaluation in the end?” I have a feeling that the more legislation that comes with these issues, the tougher it is going to be to fairly evaluate.
Here is a suggestion:
Form a committee that includes representative teachers, union reps, administrators, and parent representatives from each district in the state so they can adequately express unique concerns with this proposed legislation AND be the “experts” to FORMULATE the legislation.
I can tell you that there are few teachers I have come across who were not devoted to teaching ALL students, assisting parents and the community, and engaging in professional conduct. I am seriously rethinking how I have voted over the past years to send a strong message that education does not equal TEACHERS. Education equals STUDENTS, TEACHERS, PARENTS, ADMINISTRATION, COMMUNITY, EDUCATIONAL STAFF, VOLUNTEERS, OUTREACH ORGANIZATIONS, ENGAGING AND RIGOROUS CURRICULUM, SUPPORTIVE LEGISLATIVE STRUCTURES AND LAWS THAT SUPPORT STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND PARENTS ALIKE. If there is a problem in education, it involves ALL of us, not one of us. Let’s work TOGETHER to solve it.
THANK YOU for allowing this forum to be heard. PLEASE carefully consider your feedback.
A few minutes ago another Language Arts teacher came into my room asking if I had any resources to teach a particular concept. I shared what I had and directed her to some other possible resources on the internet. If merit pay were in place and we were competing for the same dollars, I am not so sure I would be so willing to help out another teacher. Most schools have a staff willing to work together to solve whatever problems come up. It would be disappointing if new proposals such as what are currently in the works caused teachers to be enemies instead of colleagues.
I am very confused about how the first issue “local control of due process” is about removing state government interference from local school boards and yet the other 3 issues are clearly an attempt to have the state get more control over local school boards. If you truly believe that more power should be given to local school boards, then why do you want the state to mandate pay ranges, length of contracts, and required performance pay? This seems like you are not really about local control at all but Big Government. Big Government is when any form of government tries to gain more power and control over the people. Besides your first issue, these issues are designed to take away the power of my locally elected school board to make these decisions. How is that not Big Government?
Here is a quote from Thomas Jefferson about public schools: “But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by…any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward [district], it is a belief against all experience.” That includes taking away my ability to control my local schools through the election of my neighboors to the local school board. Please don’t take away my ability to control my local schools. Let real local control happen and stay away from State Laws that mandate what happens in my school district. I will hold my school board accountable for how they spend my tax dollars through the election process and ME being involved at the local level. I just don’t feel that a politician from another county should be able to run my district, only people who live within my district should have control over it.
Dear Senator Osmond,
In political fashion, you are creating more problems than you are solving.
Issue #1 Orderly termination already includes due process and districts, through their administrators, are currently responsible for this based on policies already in place.
Issue #2 Fixed Contracts instead of a Guarantee of Continued Employment seems like a back door tactic to fire at will without due process. Private employees enjoy a measure of continued employment, whether it is deemed guaranteed in today’s economy is debatable.
Issue #3 Salary Ranges creates a competition for scarce resources that public schools should not have to fight. It is a common good, a service that is being provided, and cannot be whittled down to simple stats, data, or a grading system.
Issue #4 Performance Pay is such a diluted topic. What data can truly show what you are as a politician? Are you an “A” senator or a “C+” representative? Should your pay be determined by what the public thinks of your performance? Who evaluates you?
I do not see adequate information or data as to what problems you are addressing in your legislation ideas. You are, in my opinion, creating more problems for Utah’s public education and the employees that work to provide a service for you and this state.
State Senator Osmond,
Thank you for the chance to give you feedback on your Education Employee Reform Act Proposal. I agree with the comments of John Truesdell and Kaylee Snyder. I am not sure if I have anymore to offer other to say that I think this proposed change gives too much power to the Principals to let go teachers without a just cause, especially if the wording were to remain “at will”. I can see, like several of the people who posted in front of me that the older,more experienced teachers could be let go if the District simply wants to cut costs in tight years. Potentially you could see a school district where there would be no teacher in the District who had over five years experience. I understand that this most likely would not happen, but the wording of the bill makes it a real possibility. I do support a move to streamline and make it easier to relieve the less effective, and poorer teachers of their duties if they fail to make adequate progress toward improving. I am also wondering in your legislation, however who is doing the evaluation? I think that if you wanted to really change things then you would go to the teachers. Create a panel of the best teachers in Utah and have them work on a fair system of evaluating our professionals in Utah. I do not believe that business people, politicians or lawyers should be asked to sit on a panel determining how teachers should be evaluated. This should be done by those of us on the front lines, or in other words still in the classroom.
I have taught in two states, Utah being one of them and I can tell you that the greater part of the teachers I work with, and have observed are of the highest character and quality and I would not mind trusting my kids education to them, which I have done. These are great and extremely dedicated educators who deserve more then they are getting paid and deserve greater support from the state legislature than a piece of legislation that would disrupt their peace and happiness and force them to live under a cloud of uncertainty as to their job security when they reach a certain number of years. Thank you for your time.
I thought you may be interested in the Educator Effectiveness Project that is currently underway at the Utah State Office of Education. Here is a link to more information: http://schools.utah.gov/cert/Educator-Effectiveness-Project.aspx
The foundational assumptions of the Utah Educator Effectiveness Project recognize that high quality instruction in all public schools in Utah requires:
•Measuring teaching and leadership with research-based performance standards.
•Aligning preparation programs to Utah Effective Teaching Standards and Utah Educational Leadership Standards.
•Evaluating the effectiveness of educators yearly using multiple measures.
•Recruiting, retaining, promoting, and rewarding the most effective educators.
•Providing appropriate professional development at all stages of the professional career continuum.
Let me know if you have any questions about the Educator Effectiveness Project and I can help get you in touch with the appropriate person in USOE to learn more about it.
I hope this is helpful!
-Elizabeth Ziegler, USOE Social Media Specialist, UtahPublicEducation.org administrator
Dear Senator Osmond,
Thank you so much for being willing to listen to teacher input. I believe that this is one of those very rare occasions when the public and educators have been asked to discuss how this will impact what is often an already difficult job. As I have read through the posts on this blog, I find I agree with many of these statements, and especially Pat Rusk’s warning of what could happen to a bill once it goes to committee.
I cannot offer much more additional insight than has already been presented in most areas, other than the difference in pay for difficult to staff areas. I teach science in a middle school. I have multiple endorsements, a bachelor’s in biology, and a master’s in chemistry instruction. A few years ago, the legislature passed a bill called the “Teacher Salary Supplement.” This bill was to provide something like a bonus to teachers in science and mathematics. The intent was to provide some sort of monetary compensation in a “high demand” area. The issue with this is you had to have a MAJOR in the area you taught in, not just an endorsement. So although you are considered “highly qualified” and can teach and do a great job in physics, chemistry, or 7th and 8th grade science, if you don’t have a major in that area, you are not eligible, and mathematics is similar. As a result, most science and math teachers cannot receive the supplement, because they are teaching in their minor area.
Another item to consider is that this idea seems to devalue other instructors, such as language arts, social studies, and so on. I know my job would be even harder without excellent English and History teachers who put in just as many hours as I do. Ideas from other fields help me teach more effectively, and help my students learn and use that knowledge. Would this still occur, if I had to compete with my colleagues for funds? Would I still be willing to mentor new teachers, to provide labs and lesson plans to my entire department, and to teachers outside of my school? I don’t know. There is a saying to the effect that to discover 4,000 years of physics would take 4,000 years. Merit pay could very easily destroy the sharing and collaboration process that is vital in educational improvement.
I have one last question: Where is the money coming from? The way things have happened the past several years, budgets have been cut and slashed to the marrow of the bone. Will this be an instance of robbing Peter to pay Paul, as has happened in recent years as line items have been moved into the general budget. Or will this be another example of a mandate from the government that starts off being funded, and then after five years the funding is removed, leaving the district in worse straights.
Please consider carefully the long term ramifications of this bill.
Sincerely,
Jana Barrow
My husband, sister, mother-in-law, two brother-in-laws and I are all educators in Davis District; these issues are extremely important to our family. Thanks for asking for our input! :)
A competent, intelligent friend of mine graduated in Utah with her teaching license last year but had to move to Idaho to find employment. How can we justify losing bright, new educators while keeping teachers who are only here to collect a paycheck and have summers off? I don’t know if localization of control and fixed contracts are the answer, but I’m willing to bet it’s better than our current state of affairs.
I have personally witnessed the inadequacy of our termination process. It’s EXTREMELY difficult for principals to fire incompetent teachers once they have reached “tenure”, no matter how consistently poor their performance is. It takes literally YEARS of documentation (observations, test scores, interventions with coaches and mentors) and hours upon hours of administrator time, which is a huge waste of resources and detrimental to the students. We actually have to PROVE there’s no student growth for multiple years to even consider firing a teacher. What does this look like on our test scores? More importantly, who suffers?
As to the issues of performance pay and changed salary schedules, you are treading on a slippery slope. My family would actually BENEFIT from salary based on role, demand, and difficulty because I’m a reading coach in the lowest Title 1 school in our district and my husband teaches Special Education in high school. As a spcial educator, he not only teaches four different classes, he deals with dozens of IEP meetings, special trainings, targeted testing and mountains of extra paperwork that regular educators don’t have to deal with. Do I think he deserves extra pay because of the difficulty of his job? Absolutely! However, I, too, wonder where this extra money would come and how long we will really have it. Would we take away money from “regular” educators (in one of the lowest paying states) to give to teachers with harder jobs? This would be devastating to our dwindling moral and further discourage people from joining this profession.
Performance pay is an even HARDER issue to solve and brings up more questions than it answers. For example, in a grade with four teachers, the classes scored an average of 79%, 81%, 78% and 68% on end of level tests. At first glance, you would obviously not give the fourth teacher the performance bonuses enjoyed by the other three. Looking closely, though, you would find that this teacher’s top five students had moved out before testing and were replaced with five students below reading level, including one ESL student who moved in the week before testing. Are test scores only indicator of success? Of course not. There are many different things that play into test scores, and if you are truly going to award PERFORMANCE pay, you must look at all facets. Who would be the ultimate judge? Will there be a system of checks and balances to make sure this power is not abused?
Thanks, again, for giving us the opportunity to share our opinions, questions and concerns.
Sincerely,
Liz Batchelor
Dear Senator Osmond
I feel that more times than not we have legislators who have never taught and have never been a classroom making decisions that potentially can impact thousands of lives. I appreciate the opportunity to voice concerns that will not only impact me as a teacher but also my students.
I teach History at the high school level. I think often we History teachers are viewed as not as important as Math and Science teachers. But our job is to teach students civic responsibility. We are to teach them about the past and arm them with knowledge not to repeat history and to make a difference through participation in politics, community service, and leadership.
I worry about your proposal to pay teachers of different fields more money. I realize that Math and Science are important but so are Language Arts and History. Where would our students be if they cannot read and write? I know many English teachers who put in hundreds of hours every year outside of school hours reading and grading essays. Does this not deserve extra pay? You might also find that basing salary on market demand, future teachers will not become “highly qualified” in the fields of Language Arts and History and rather focus on Math and Science because that is where the money is. Utah is already one of the lowest paying states. Moving here from California I took a $10,000 cut in pay.
I do however feel that teachers who are more specialized in terms of inner-city, special needs, ESL should be paid more. Special needs teachers have hours of work to keep in compliance with the laws governing special education.
In addition, teachers should be paid more for years of experience and higher education. I earned a Master’s degree in education and I am now facing $40,000 in student loans. I have tossed around the idea of a PHD, but the $1,000 dollars a year you would get does not make it worth the cost of the education or the energy put into earning the degree.
Four years ago before the budget cuts, there were proposals for performance pay. I worked closely with my team teachers and we developed a program to help better meet the needs of our under achieving students in the framework of the program. We were later told that there was no money and this would not happen? Not being discouraged and having our student’s best interests at heart, we followed through with our program for no pay. I think that the public underrates just how much teachers do for their students. We often put in long hours in tutoring with no recognition and no extra pay. I think students should be rewarded for our extra efforts that some of our colleagues might not make.
I do not however think that our pay should be attached strictly to CRT scores. Our classes are full of all levels of students. One sub group alone can be the reason for a whole school not achieving their AYP and as a whole appearing as a failure, but in reality, the majority of the students did well. Who will decide what equals success? Will all schools and teachers be held to the same accountability? I think there are too many problems that might arise.
Thank You
Aileen Bennett
Dear Senator Osmond,
I am thankful that you are willing to solicit response from the very people your proposed legislation would affect. I am thankful to be a part of the teaching core. I view teaching as a noble profession in which I can have a profound influence on the future of my students. I realize that not all teachers either behave this way or believe it anymore. For those who have lost the zeal for teaching and students please apply the current system of evaluation to help them find another avenue of employment, but as I am sure you are aware they are in the minority. The legislation you propose, which would open great potential for lawsuits, wouldn’t be a positive for the majority who are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities under what can only be described as difficult circumstances.
With the hard financial times, class sizes across the state are up dramatically. Money for programs, supplies, and support has dried up or ceased to exist. Programs are being instituted with no monetary means to fulfill them, but only requirements that force an already underpaid teacher core to finance further education to comply with those mandates. The majority of us spend far more time at school working in behalf of our students to help them succeed than we are paid to do. I spend upwards of 55 hours a week, but am paid for only 40. I have never once questioned being an educator, even now in difficult funding years where my classroom averages are over 38. I love my job and the family I have the blessing to teach with every day. Please help us to educate these glorious children by giving us the tools necessary to do so, not with extra worry about contracts and potential personality conflicts and extra hoops. Doing so will only make my job to serve the children of the great state of Utah harder. Please know that your fellow servant appreciates you willingness to serve.
Sincerely,
Mr. L Carvel Wilson (18 years as a teacher)
A perspective on your P.E.E.R. act
Senator Osmond,
I wasn’t able to attend your local Weber county meeting, but here are some of my views. I have responded to your blog post explaining your positions.
Note: I am not a member of UEA due to differences in national political leanings.
Local Control of Due Process
1) While most of Utah appreciates the local control aspect of politics, running a school at the local level brings in a host of problems. Many districts/schools are run by “ole boys networks” and having them completely in control of hiring and firing will lead to nepotism, favoritism, etc. My own district hires administrators almost purely on coaching and friendship. Being an excellent teacher or even an excellent leader is not a prerequisite. Coaching and knowing other coaches almost guarantees you a position. Since I don’t coach and would rather focus on academics I am pretty much on the “first to fire” list despite having the highest scores in my department for 4 years running.
Speaking about the Orderly Termination Act: it is not unduly difficult to fire people after they reach “career status”. I’ve seen it done a number of times. All it takes for a firing to occur is for a principal to actually do their job. Having had over a dozen administrators during my career, I feel it is safe to say that most don’t know how or just don’t care to remediate teachers. They hire and fire based on whim more than data or observation. I have had administrators that didn’t even step in my class for 4 years straight! Having an “orderly” means of termination guarantees the teachers a fair shake; that their terminations will be based solely on their work performance and not if they are buddies with the principal or district office personnel.
Solution: Status quo or creating a “board” comprised of teachers, administrators, and community members (parents) that would hear due process issues. Including seasoned fellow teachers in the remediation process would be a huge boon to retaining those teachers who could be helped with a little boost. Currently, it is more of a “sink or swim” during your first years and many new teachers are caught in bad or ineffective habits that cause their later firing. Having a support system for new teachers that is improved over the current would also greatly reduce the number of times a teacher is covered negatively in the media.
Fixed Contracts instead of a Guarantee of Continued Employment
2) As mentioned above, principals are often very biased and not always competent in education. Often they face pressures like staffing coaches or pressures from the community that drown out the true focus of education. Allowing principals to drop contracts based on whim is the wrong way to go and does zero to protect longevity for teaching here in Utah. Why would anyone want to stay for the long haul when Wyoming pays better and respects teachers more?
In addition, should fixed contracts become the rule, you will begin to see a rash of firings of older, more veteran teachers. Principals, and especially superintendents, are often faced with huge shortfalls for funding. When it is relatively easy to fire people (based on whim), why not replace the 20 year veteran for a brand new graduate that costs only half the money? Fixed contracts will open the door to many lawsuits of wrongful termination.
Again, there is no “tenure” in Utah. A teacher may be fired for non-completion of contractual duties. It just takes a principal willing to complete the process of allowing a remediation opportunity. Leaving contracts in the hands of principals will, again, bring out the worst in schools. Instead of focusing on education, teachers will be consumed with the politics of pleasing the principal. I know in my case, I would be terminated just for not fitting in with the ole boys network of sports coaches. Yet, I go above and beyond to complete my contractual duties and there is no “due cause” to fire me.
Lastly, there is and will be no negotiation. We only have to look at the example of Ogden City School District to see how teachers are valued. I used to work in that backward district and have spoken to a few of my former coworkers. Some did sit down for a negotiation and were told they would be paid what the district decided. Their “take it or leave it” contract shows absolutely no willingness to consider the individual merit of teachers. It did show, however, the willingness of the district to dismiss anyone that didn’t see things the way they did.
Solution: institute a system of review boards for teachers. Instead of having one principal and an assistant review teachers, have veteran teachers form a committee WITH the administration and review the practices of other teachers (much more in depth than just a cursory sit-in observation once a year). Teachers can work together to improve each other’s teaching efforts and techniques. Having participated in a pilot program like this in the past, I can tell you it is one of the most effective ways for teaching improvement. I loved it! Research methods come into play. Multiple perspectives are covered. Any remediation needs can be handled by the very coworkers that depend on each other. Having a principal that most likely has never taught your content area and quite often hasn’t even taught your age group is really ineffective.
Salary Ranges
3) I do agree with offering pay based on education and years of experience, as it currently is. I also agree with adding a bonus for those in difficult areas.
However, I am a highly qualified and highly performing science teacher, and even though I potentially would be paid more, I disagree with basing pay on area taught. Teaching is all about collaboration and creating unequal pay amongst different departments in schools ends up causing dissension. There already exist programs that provide “bonus” money to science and math teachers in the form of USTAR. Why not continue to fund this now defunct program? Why pit me against all the other teachers with an unequal base pay? I definitely do agree that teaching in a Title I school should earn a teacher some type of pay bonus. Having worked in one at the first of my career, I have seen firsthand what a difficult task it can be. Paying extra for Title I schools ensures a bit of fairness for those who take on the huge task of teaching those who are 2 to 6 grades behind the curve. It is a monumental task and many can’t stay there and stay sane (I know I couldn’t for very long).
Higher education for teachers is a primary means of improving our classrooms and our instruction. Higher education as a component of pay raises is essential. Otherwise, you’ll be hiring at the bottom of the barrel. As it stands, a teacher will never be given a promotion during their entire career. Why bother entering the field if there are no pay bumps due to educational attainment? A masters will cost anywhere from $15,000 to 20,000 or more. Why bother if it will never be reimbursed through higher pay? We’ll end up with a very uneducated teaching force in Utah and those seeking a higher degree will go elsewhere after obtaining their relatively cheap master’s degrees in Utah.
Solution: (and I realize the status quo will never change, but…) Phase out principals and administration positions in schools. Create teacher-admins that work part time in a classroom and part time as administrators in the school. Some states and districts have gone to this model. It allows for some professional growth (and pay bumps) but keeps administrators in the classroom where they still have that connection with the true purpose of education.
Also, fully fund bonus programs like USTAR. It doesn’t need to be part of the base pay. Teachers that want to earn the extra money can apply and do the extra work that it takes. Currently, I’m in several programs, some funded by USTAR, and some that I do for free. It would be really nice to see my extra labor (outside contract obligations) rewarded even if only with a small amount of money. Such funding programs can be funded and instituted across the state. The state office can oversee the requirements and distribution. This offer of extra money helps with both the stagnation of the salary schedule and also provides a bit of incentive to reach even higher in professional goals for token amounts of money.
Performance Pay
4) Here is the largest issue. There exists no satisfactory program of merit pay. There is no way that anyone can quantify all the variables that go into teaching a classroom of children. Even the technique of value added metrics during the year is faulty. Example: I have highly hormonal teens. This is the year they starting getting mouthy and apathetic. So, to take their scores from the beginning and the end doesn’t produce a result based on MY efforts. It shows just how much they are weathering puberty. Merit pay can’t possibly take into account the variables such as ESL kids, attendance, resource or special ed, divorce, abuse or other family drama, moving, transiency, extended vacations or illnesses, etc.
In the end it comes down to one simple factor. While my teaching may have a direct impact on students and their scores, I cannot be fully accountable for what happens in their lives. In the end, it must rest on their shoulders. The actual merit of a teacher’s work should be measured in what THEY do, i.e., the techniques they employ, the methods of curriculum delivery, and the strategies used in communication with students and parents. This can be effectively measured using the review boards I mentioned above.
Solution: eliminate the automatic social promotion that exists in K-8 grades. Many students arrive in the 9th grade with absolutely no concept of responsibility. For many of these students, they wake up in the 9th grade when they get their first “F”. For others, the reality of actually working for a grade doesn’t hit for a year or two. Often, it is too late to recover credit and they drop out. Installing a system of checks in the early grades and reducing or eliminating social promotion would be a HUGE change in Utah schools… and definitely for the positive.
If there absolutely must be a system of merit pay, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT base it on factors that are outside of a teacher’s control.
Solution: I don’t really have one. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of merit pay in public education. Many states have gone toward merit pay and with mixed results. The one clear common factor is funding. Florida, for example has mixed results but they have funded their schools adequately and also funded those areas that need remedial help. Utah is the lowest funded state and I truly don’t believe that any mandates to improve will ever be backed up with monetary support. I see unfunded merit pay as another way for the legislature to destroy public education in Utah.
A Concerned Teacher
Senator Osmond-Like many of those before me, I appreciate being given the opportunity to share my thoughts. The orderly termination act, as it stands now, works. In 26 years of teaching, I have seen a handful of teachers, who probably shouldn’t have been teaching, work through it and not be offered a contract the following year. Their due process was protected, and the outcome was best for students: they were removed from the classroom. Also, I have concerns about merit pay. There is no quick and dirty way to evaluate educators. Children are so complex, and come to us with such a variety of backgrounds.
If you are really concerned about helping public education, increase the WPU. That is the true way to assure local control. Local associations and school boards can work together to put the money where it will best help students.
It takes a village to raise a child, but only one member of the village is under scrutiny here. What if a tax credit were offered to parents who can prove they are “highly qualified” parents?
Every day, I ask Johnny to read for 20 minutes at home, but it doesn’t happen. Why? Because Dad hates doing the teacher’s job.
Every week, I give a reading test to monitor Johnny’s progress and he has flat-lined. I ask Johnny to come to school early so that he can get some extra help, but Johnny doesn’t show. Why? Because Mom would rather have Johnny ride the bus.
Every quarter, I meet with a group of educators to discuss possible interventions. But Johnny isn’t allowed to miss any elective subjects (like art or music). Why? Because Dad thinks it isn’t fair.
Every year, I send a second grader onto third grade, even though I KNOW he is not ready. Why? Because mommy is afraid that repeating second grade will hurt Johnny’s feelings.
Who failed this child?
Dear Senator Osmond,
I appreciate the opportunity to comment on your ideas. I have been an educator for 25 years in a small rural district. During those 25 years, I have seen many ideas and proposals implemented to solve all the problems and concerns within our educational system. I have always been optimistic, open minded, and have continued to believe that this year we will see some success. Unfortunately, not many of the ideas mandated have had an overwhelmingly strong successful result.
Teachers in our district are evaluated based on an evolutionary evaluation processes that was devised within our district, and is directed to improve public education. Poor performing teachers are not rehired while others are constantly working to use best teaching practices and evaluating data collected to make decisions on ways to improve all students’ learning. It is a joint effort between board members, district administrators and teachers. Merit pay will destroy this working relationship. Who decides who will be paid more or less just because little Sally felt sick on the day of the test, or Ben’s parents were getting a divorce? I as well as many others, within our district, have not received a pay increase for 5 years. In fact we are earning less than we did 5 years ago. Obviously we are not doing this job for the pay, and merit pay will only make it worse. We are doing it for the love we have for the students and education in general. Sen. Osmond, I would love to have you come visit my classroom and my school. Every year we extend invitations to our elected officials. We would be ecstatic if just one would take time out of their busy schedule to visit with us. So far none have taken us up on our offer. Please be the first! I would love for you to see what all of our students, our teachers, and our school has accomplished. We work hard and get very little praise or money in return. Please do no attack and tear down public education. Stand with us and help us to build our system stronger. We are the ones in the trenches. We are the ones fighting the battles. We are not the ones raging the war. Come visit with us and truly listen to our suggestions to make a better education system.
Senator Osmond,
Thank you for your willingness to take input on these controversial and difficult issues. I look forward to having you visit my clasroom at Herriman High in the near future.
As a highly qualified, National Board Certified, Physics teacher of 26 years, I am extremely concerned about several aspects of your proposal.
First, as has been explained by previous posts – Career educator status is not a guarantee of continued employment, it is a guarantee of due process and as the law states “orderly termination” no termination at the whim of a principal or parent. As one who was let go during his provisional status many years ago simply because a board member’s daughter received a failing grade – this can and will happen if you allow educators to be “non-renewed” at the end of every 5 year term with no reason given. You also run the risk that principals will be asked to “balance their budgets” within each building by not offering contracts to higher paid employees regardless of their past performance or abilities.
Currently, the due process part of the orderly termination act allow educators the ability to not only do what is right for students, regardless of how unpopular having high academic standards might be with parents, but it also allow them to speak their minds when principals or other district officials want them to do something questionable. (It also allow principals (who would be limited to a three year contract) to make sure that their teachers can’t be harassed by either the district or parents for doing their jobs without that principal living in fear or retribution as well. This protection would disappear if your bill passes as written.
Second, the idea that educators (like myself) who can retire before these provisions are mandated to take affect, can “opt-out” – but only if they give up any chance at “merit pay” smacks, quite frankly of coercion (read that blackmail)which is both the “slap in the face” that you mention and ethically questionable. On the flip side – given the fact that the current economy probably won’t fund any real kind of merit increases – maybe it wouldn’t be worth it for someone like me to “opt in” and risk being let go (as stated above) for some paltry sum in merit pay.
Finally, as for paying science and math teachers more (I teach both, and yes, I would love more money), however the problem is that in order for my students to do well they need to come to me with excellent foundational skills. Skills that begin in elementary school and continue to be nurtured by junior high and high school teachers who don’t teach math and science. Why? Because all physics problems are word problems and if they can’t read and comprehend the words, trying to teach the formulas and concepts is a hopeless exercise.
Senator Osmond,
I am a public education advocate working with educators who are members of the Jordan and Canyons Education Associations. Every day I am in the schools, talking to educators; both in the classroom and administrative roles. I work with educators experiencing overflowing classrooms. Their students are forced to sit on the floor because there are not enough desks to accommodate the class size (yes, there are science, math and language arts classes with 45+ students), textbooks shared between several students that are unavailble for indiviidual homework study, insufficient technology for computer lab work, incomplete or limited science labs which hamper science curriculum, etc. The list goes on and on. The state legislature has starved public education for over 10 years. Pressure has been placed on local school districts, and educators, to do more with less. School districts such as Jordan’s, that experience annual student growth, must make choices that hurt successful programs and teaching.
The solution will not be found in using the “boots on the ground”, classroom teachers, as the scapegoats for a legislature that has squeezed the life out of our schools by its unwillingness to fund growth in the State of Utah. The phrase “bad teachers” has become a media message to “frame” the agenda of those who wish to privitaize public education. Our educataors (both in the classroom and administration) are honest, hard-working individuals who lack the resources, professional development, respect and support to be successful. Stripping an educator’s ability to receive due process, remediation as needed, a fair wage, a voice in their profession, and respect, is not “education reform”, it’s “union busting” or an attempt to push the most important partner out of the debate.
I applaud your willingness to ‘listen” to educators. I hope that you “hear” what is being said and are moved to act. Teachers are not the enemy. The UEA and its affiliates are not the enemy. Together, we can be the solution. By increasing open dialogue and setting a place “at the table” for collaboration and mutual action, we can move mountains – and rebuild our public schools.
With hope for a collaborative future,
Cindy Carroll
Senator Osmond,
First let me thank you for taking the time to ask how teachers feel about these issues. Too many times individuals without any formal education or experience in child development or education are making policies that affect children. When this happens, there are often consequences that someone more experienced would have likely foreseen. This is what will happen if school districts institute performance pay; there will be way more negative unintended consequences that will overshadow any positives. Great teachers will always do what is best for their students whether or not it affects their salaries. In fact, great teachers are more likely to welcome “challenging students” into their classroom, but if their paycheck is reduced, it will seriously make them think twice! Research has shown that this pay system creates animosity between teachers and reduces collaborative interactions.
Legislators have been legislating Education since Sputnik went into orbit. Look where all that legislation has put us. Teaching is a PROFESSION. Those of us in the field are PROFESSIONALS. We have educated ourselves to be so. Many have gone on to become Masters of Education. Some Doctors as well. Why not allow US to the courtesy of legislating ourselves. We have respect for our profession and we would find fair and equitable ways of measuring competency in our profession and find ways to fairly and equitable compensate those who rise above the norm. Give us the respect and the authority to chart our own course and then give us the room to make it work.
Why does government legislate education? Because they cannot legislate families and it is in the family where education begins.
[...] See Sen. Osmond’s blog explaining the proposal [...]
[...] See Sen. Osmond’s blog explaining the proposal [...]