Major business interests such as Microsoft back the compromise proposal. An overwhelming 46-3 Senate vote of support Tuesday sent it to the House, where it’s being fast-tracked and has support from leaders of both parties.
“It makes a statement from the Legislature, a strong statement, that we understand the quality of the teacher is the most important thing that we can control,” said Rep. Bruce Dammeier, a Puyallup Republican who helped negotiate the deal in Gov. Chris Gregoire’s office.
But many details of the reassignment and layoff policy will be decided in bargaining with unions in the state’s 295 school districts and won’t fully take effect until 2015.
Approval in the Legislature should remove any lingering questions about whether big business will support Gregoire’s call for a half-cent sales tax increase to help patch the state budget.
Some lawmakers still have grave doubts about whether voters would approve a tax increase, but businesses such as Boeing and Microsoft told Gregoire they would support it; she had told them she would push for tougher teacher evaluations. The two issues are seen as linked.
The Washington Education Association said the bill needs improvement and that teachers should have participated in negotiations.
But as Gregoire looked on, senators approved the deal with only three dissenting votes, from Democrats Karen Fraser of Thurston County, Craig Pridemore of Vancouver and Steve Conway of Tacoma.
SHADES OF TACOMA STRIKE
Conway says the changes could cause more strife between teachers and districts.
Making performance a factor in reassignments, along with seniority, was at the heart of last fall’s teacher strike in Tacoma, he told senators, and the district is working out new policies.
Other districts are trying out pilot projects that could become models for the statewide evaluation system.
“All of a sudden now, right in the middle of this process, we’re imposing our will on their process,” Conway said.
Gregoire, who brokered a deal to end the teacher strike, said this reinforces rather than overturns what’s happening in districts, including Tacoma Public Schools.
“I was very careful in the negotiations here so as not to disrupt what they’re doing” in Tacoma, the Democratic governor said.
IMPLEMENTATION KEY
Lawmakers in 2010 started moving the state from a two-tier system that graded educators as “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” to a four-tier system. They put pilot programs in place and called for statewide expansion by the 2013-14 school year.
The new compromise fills in the details. The proposal would require measures of student growth, such as improvement in test scores, to be a “substantial factor” in evaluations.
Educators would be rated from 1 to 4. Those scores would help decide how fast they obtain tenure. Low scores could land them on probation and, if they don’t make progress, get them fired.
Scores would also have to be “one of multiple factors” in layoffs and reassignments starting in the 2015-16 school year.
They could be a large or small factor in those decisions depending on districts’ and unions’ contract agreements. Districts today can base them on seniority alone.
Districts “are the ones that are going to have to make it work. It wouldn’t be right for us to micromanage from Olympia,” Dammeier said.
Senate Democrats’ negotiator, Rosemary McAuliffe of Bothell, said the pilot programs’ recommendations would chart a course, the extra time would allow best practices to develop, and lawmakers could decide to step in with a more specific mandate later.
“We’ll make the decisions as we get the research,” McAuliffe said.
She and Gregoire said other states that implemented reforms in a less gradual way have mostly failed to live up to promises they made that secured federal money tied to education reform. Washington fell short in that federal “Race to the Top” competition.
McAuliffe said the legislation builds in protections for teachers from being poorly evaluated at the whims of their bosses.
Districts would have to grant a teacher’s request for a third-party evaluator in the process of probation.
Teachers and principals would receive training on the new system. The Tacoma teachers’ union said training for principals is “imperative.”
“With higher stakes evaluations, we need to make sure the process is clean, fair and done equitably,” said Tacoma Education Association President Andy Coons.
Tacoma Superintendent Art Jarvis said Tuesday the inclusion of multiple data points for measuring student growth was significant.
“If they were trying to take a single data point, most of us agree that’s not fair,” Jarvis said.
Staff writer Debbie Cafazzo contributed to this report.
Jordan Schrader: 360-786-1826
jordan.schrader@thenews tribune.com
