Legislature Reforms Teacher Tenure: Education Experts Recommend Michigan Residents (1) Rejoice or (2) Mourn

As you might imagine, A2Politico gets lots of press releases. We never simply reprint press releases as “news.” That would be cheating, as any fourth grade teacher knows. Yesterday, A2P got several press releases concerning the same news story. The press releases, however, present very different perspectives. This is the first press release, from the group StudentsFirst:

The Michigan legislature approved a package of sweeping education reforms Thursday night. The measures are now headed to Gov. Rick Snyder for his signature. He has indicated he would approve the legislation.

The measures will reform teacher tenure rules and end last in, first out (LIFO), the harmful practice of basing teacher layoffs on length of service and not the quality of an educator’s work with students.

The bills also require that teachers and administrators undergo fair and robust evaluations to ensure our educators get the feedback and professional development they want and need and students get the best possible learning environments.

The need for change is glaring. Currently, only a third of Michigan’s fourth-graders score “proficient”, or demonstrated competency, on the National Assessment for Educational Progress, a national reading test. What’s more, a recent report found 47 percent of Detroiters are functionally illiterate.

StudentsFirst, a national nonprofit organization focused on making critical changes to the nation’s public school system, has worked closely with lawmakers in Michigan to advocate for the reforms approved by both House and Senate. StudentsFirst members testified at legislative hearings and helped raise awareness for change by sending more that 20,000 petitions and emails urging legislators to end seniority-based layoffs. In addition, the movement launched an extensive ad campaign in the state illustrating LIFO’s detrimental impact on Michigan’s children.

In case you don’t know, this description of StudentsFirst comes from the group’s website: “Led by Michelle Rhee (pictured right, on the cover of Time), the former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, StudentsFirst formed in 2010 in response to an increasing demand for a better education system in America. Our grassroots movement is designed to mobilize parents, teachers, students, administrators, and citizens throughout country, and to channel their energy to produce meaningful results on both the local and national level. StudentsFirst is a 501(c)4 organization based in Washington, D.C.”

This is the second press release, from the Michigan Education Association:

‘A sad day for Michigan students’

Anti-collective bargaining, anti-tenure bills hurt children

EAST LANSING, Mich., June 30, 2011 — Michigan lawmakers who voted today to strip collective bargaining rights from public school employees and dismantle teacher tenure will be held accountable for actions that hurt school children statewide.

Senate passage of House Bills 4625-4628 will force good teachers out of the classroom, lead to high staff turnover, and stifle the creativity and voices of educators. On top of devastating budget cuts that have cost the jobs of about 15,000 public school employees to date, today’s actions by the GOP-led Legislature continue an unprecedented assault on the middle class.

“This is a sad day for Michigan students,” said MEA President Iris K. Salters. “Whenever the working conditions of Michigan school employees are threatened, the learning conditions of students are deeply affected.”

Following anticipated House passage of these bills, they will go to Gov. Rick Snyder, who is expected to sign them into law.

“These bills do not ensure that students have access to great schools or the strongest teachers,” Salters said. “These bills do not ensure that schools have adequate resources to provide the type of education our students need. These bills are nothing but a partisan attack on teachers and public school employees.”

Michigan voters must now hold the Legislature – and Gov. Rick Snyder – accountable for their decisions on these bills.

“We will do everything in our power to fight back,” Salters said.

Then, A2Politico got a press release from a local group called Ed Trust-Midwest. This group, based in Ann Arbor, is funded by the Kellogg, and Kresge-Skillman Foundations.

Statement on Historic Education Reforms Passed Tonight by Michigan Legislature

Ed Trust-Midwest applauds lawmakers for passing teacher tenure, evaluation reforms that will help good teachers stay in classrooms

LANSING, MICH. (June 30, 2011) — Tonight the Michigan legislature made history by reforming antiquated teacher tenure and other laws that have been powerful barriers to ensuring all Michigan students are taught by effective teachers.  The groundbreaking laws also provide a new potential pathway for the development of more consistent and reliable evaluation of educators and improved professional development for our teachers.

“All of our kids deserve the best teachers that our state and nation can provide. We applaud lawmakers for their courage in passing these reforms despite intense pressure from adult-focused special interest groups,” said Amber Arellano, executive director of The Education Trust-Midwest, a Michigan-based education policy and advocacy organization.

“We need to credit Gov. Rick Snyder and both Republican and Democratic leaders who promised to reform tenure — not eliminate it — and supported these changes that will make it easier to staff schools with high-quality leaders and teachers, especially in our urban schools,” Arellano said.  “That said, there are important questions still left unanswered in this legislation, including how we define student growth and effective teaching in Michigan.  These questions will need to be addressed so that our teachers can be assured consistent evaluations, and so that our parents and students can have confidence in the quality of staff in our schools.”

Among the reforms passed:

• Performance-based Tenure: Michigan teacher tenure now is partly based on performance and not simply time clocked in a school.  To earn tenure, new Michigan teachers will need to earn at least three consecutive effective or highly effective ratings on annual performance evaluations.
• Dismissing Chronically Low-Performing Teachers: Teachers or administrators who earn three, consecutive ineffective ratings on their annual performance evaluations will be dismissed.
• More Feedback for New and Struggling Teachers: Under Ed Trust-Midwest’s tenure reform plan adopted by the legislature, new teachers also will now receive more feedback and professional development during their formative years in the profession.   School districts are required to provide individualized professional development plans for struggling teachers to help them improve, as well.
• Performance-Based Teacher Lay-Off: Performance now is the majority factor in determining which teachers in Michigan are laid off, in addition to teachers’ special training and accomplishments and in some cases, teachers’ years of experience.
• Educator Performance based on Student Achievement: In the coming years, Michigan schools will need to focus educators’ attention on student learning — the central mission of public education.  All schools will be required to evaluate teacher and administrator performance based on student growth data using the following percentages:  25 percent for school year 2013-2014; 40 percent for school year 2014-15; and 50 percent for school year 2015-16.

So which is it? Do we rejoice, or do we put on sack cloth and ashes? The disparate and vastly polarized viewpoints concerning what to do about the failing K-12 education system in the United States are represented perfectly in these press releases.

A2P got a fourth release yesterday, and that one was about a study of what is called the “opportunity gap” in the United States. The “opportunity gap” is the new buzz phrase to explain why certain K-12 school districts are failing to educate their students. ProPublica has an opportunity gap database that strives to answer the question of whether your local schools are providing your children with the opportunities they need. What did ProPublica discover?

“ProPublica analyzed new data from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights along with other federal education data to examine whether states provide students equal access to programs — such as Advanced Placement or higher-level math and sciences classes — that researchers say will help them later in life. We found that in some states, high-poverty schools are less likely than wealthier schools to have students enrolled those programs.”

Yes, rich people have, as a rule, universal access to more rigorous and high quality educational opportunities. Take Rick and Sue Snyder for example. Shortly after Snyder cut funding to Michigan’s K-12 system, A2Politico reported on the fact that their daughter attends a private school, where educating each student costs $20,000 per year; Snyder’s cuts to public education mean each public school student will be educated on $6,800 per year.

We didn’t need ProPublica to do a months-long investigation and analyze a train-load of data to lead us to the conclusion that rich people and rich school districts have more educational privilege, more robust AP programs, can afford to hire, train and retain more experienced teachers, and direct oodles of kids into advanced math and science courses.

The opportunity gap doesn’t end when students finish high school.

The federal government recently ended year-round access to the Pell Grant program for college undergraduates. Needy students who want to study in the summer had better be prepared to pay their own expenses. At Ivy League schools, only 10 percent of undergraduates are Pell grant recipients. At other four-year colleges that are not, shall we say, as selective as The Ivies, up to 70 percent of students enrolled are Pell grant recipients. Yes, socio-economic privilege is rampant in our education system, and I’m beginning to think that the people who send out these press releases, who have a combined billion years of higher education among them, relish the various inequalities, gaps, and educational injustices.

The state of K-12 education in our country keeps an awful lot of highly educated people employed in jobs that pay low- to mid-six figure salaries, including Iris K. Salters, President of the MEA (pictured above left), as well as Michelle Rhee, head of StudentsFirst, according to financial disclosures both entities are required to file with the federal government.

So, what do you think? Which is it? Is passage of House Bills 4625-4628 good for Michigan students, or will passage of the new law (presuming Governor Snyder signs it) be “a sad day for Michigan students?”

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