The Principal and Teacher Effectiveness bill received a new name: Great Teachers and Leaders bill. This larger name reflects the size of the bill, with its 200+ amendments, so many that legislators had to huddle frequently to understand their own language.

Democrats in internecine fight on bill
The contentious bill has pitted Democrat against Democrat, mostly. The majority of Dems oppose the bill, but at least seven support SB10-191, providing a slim majority vote for the bill. Republicans, except for bill sponsor Rep. Carole Murray, R-Castle Rock, have stayed out of the mud slug, watching with delight as Democrats go after the bill and each other.

Over 200 amendments obscure bill content
The fight has played out through the amendment process. One amendment, L163, would change the nature of teacher evaluation, discriminating between those deemed highly satisfactory and those deemed unsatisfactory. Teachers who are highly effective will receive a scantier review than those deemed less than satisfactory.

Rep. Murray asserts that the amendment would allow principals to spend more time with problem teachers. Rep. Judy Solano, D-Adams County, believes the amendment subverts the annual evaluation of every teacher, and the amount of time and money it takes to implement the bill. The amendment was been pulled to clarify.
Similarly, an amendment to pp. 32-33 was withdrawn when Rep. Jean Labuda, D-Denver, reminded the bill sponsors that the two pages had already been eliminated from the bill.

Testing assessment at heart of contention
Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, brought amendment L180 to enable school districts to create incentives for teachers to work at schools with high poverty levels. Rep. Solano added her own views on assessments, and their "flatness" in determining student achievement. "The results of exams should never be used as a basis for important decisions related to student achievement," said Solano, citing the testing industry.

Levy argued strongly against bill's premises
Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, says that "teachers themselves do not believe they've been heard in the bill." "My children have had highly effective teachers and ineffective teachers. I have found that ineffective teachers could have been let go if the teacher's principal had taken steps. How are teachers supposed to achieve higher performance just as we're forcing larger class loads, or principals achieve higher performance when resources are stripped from schools?"

Amendment to gut bill failed
Rep. Mike Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs, brought L164, several pages of "a minor, little amendment" that would allow the Governor's Council to create the state's teacher evaluation system, gutting SB10-191, and putting the whole process back with the Governor's Council.
Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, was particularly annoyed at what she deems the lack of fiscal credibility in the bill. She asserts the bill cannot be implemented on $300,000. Each teacher assessment, she says, will take at least 16 hours to complete. That means either certain principal duties will need to be filled by someone else, or teacher evaluators will give up some of their instructional time to do teacher appraisal job. The amendment lost.

Student attendance amendment offered and pulled
Rep. Max Tyler, D-Lakewood, offered amendment L203 to give teachers a break related to student attendance. If students miss a minimum of 10 days a term, teachers would not be evaluated on that student's performance. Rep. Christine Scanlon, D-Summit County, at first supported the amendment, then withdrew her support, stating that too many minority kids lose out because of inadequate attendance. Rep. Tyler withdrew his amendment.

McCann offers vigorous defense of bill
Rep. Beth McCann, D-Denver, supported the bill based on a visit with teachers and children in a low performing school in her district. "If I'm going to be held to high standards," said one student at Bruce Randolph School, "then teachers should be held to high standards too." Rep. McCann also talked about the Clayton Early Learning Center and its excellence in preparing children. Rep. Benefield noted that Clayton does have excellent results because of its one teacher to three children ratio.

Solano's addition to principal evaluation cut down
Rep. Solano brought forward an amendment to the principal evaluation portion of the bill. The amendment stated that 50 percent of principal evaluation should be derived from a leadership survey based on teacher opinion. The amendment failed.

Schafer questions bill's "assessment" theory
Rep. Sue Schafer, D-Lakewood, asserted that no research backs up the "theory" of the bill that aggressive teacher assessment leads to improved student performance. Rep. Merrifield said that the bill is a "measure and punish" bill. At 11:14 pm, with 46 minutes to spare, the bill came to a vote and passed.  

This post was published on May 12, 2010. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.

Sometimes body language tells more about legislators' views on a bill than their actual vote.  Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, advocated for HCR10-1002, a resolution to go to the voters for education funding, citing the need for more money to help children with physical and intellectual challenges.  While she spoke, Rep. Jim Kerr, R-Jeffco, Laura Bradford, R-Collbran, and Bob Gardner, R-El Paso, laughingly played a "sad song" on their imagined violin, in unison. PEN CCW

This post was published on May 11, 2010. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.

HB10-1284, the medical marijuana bill, finally passes 49-16, rejecting Rep. Sol Pace's request that the bill be sent back to committee for one last revision.  Members had many questions related to the bill as they tried to confirm their understanding of the bill.

As it is, the bill allows cities to reject dispensaries, pushing them into larger urban areas.  Caregivers are limited to five individuals.  The bill, if signed by the governor, will probably be revised again next year. PEN, CCW

This post was published on May 11, 2010. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.

Evaluation of public employees is consuming the last few days of the 2010 General Assembly.  SB10-191 attempts to set performance evaluation criteria for public school teachers and principals, and HB10-1409 attempts to set performance evaluation criteria for state employees.

The mix and match of who's supporting which bills may confuse the general citizen.  The various combinations confirm Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous quote:  A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

SB10-191: Reform or attack

SB10-191 has received furious, and conflicting, input from teacher unions and education leaders.  Four governors support the bill, as well as former Denver Mayor Federico Pena.  These leaders believe the bill represents the first important reform to teacher tenure, or, in its clunkier form, non probationary employment status. 

Teachers see the bill as a blitzkrieg attack on the teaching community by pseudo education reformers who aren't addressing the key issues facing public education.

GOP supports 191, Dems split

Republican legislators support SB10-191 universally.  Now that the bill is in the House, the challenge for bill supporters will be to pick up enough Democrats to move the bill forward. 

Democrats split in the Senate, with seven Dem legislators supporting the bill and fourteen Dems opposing.  Apparently, some Democrats are barely speaking to each other because of the bill, affecting the status of other education legislation such as HB10-1430, a bill to change Colorado assessment tests from grades 8-10.

The theory of 191 is that annual teacher evaluation will improve teacher quality.  The bill also changes how teachers receive and retain non probationary, or tenured, status.  If a non probationary teacher receives two consecutive years of "ineffective" performance ratings, that teacher goes back to probationary status and must improve to keep the job.

Other key features are that a Governor's Council will determine highly effective, effective, and ineffective teaching criteria.  Fifty percent of teacher evaluation will be based on student test performance.  School districts will have some freedom to determine assessment tools. 

This new evaluation process will allow principals to identify who's doing the best teaching, or the worst.  No particular compensation is attached to either rating - only pride, apparently, and the expectation that the worst teachers will have to improve or leave.

HB10-1409: Compensation reform or irrelevance

HB10-1409 probably has no Republican support, even though it will also set up criteria for performance evaluation.  Democrats see the bill as a way to give state employees an incremental raise if they stay at one job over a period of time.  Today, employees have to change jobs to get a raise.

The bill requires the state department of personnel, with department executives, to create twelve levels within pay grades for annual increases.  The increases only come into play if the state experiences a five percent increase in Colorado personal income in an 18 month period, and the employee receives a satisfactory evaluation.

Rep. Mark Waller, R-El Paso, said the bill is a "tough one.  On the one hand we have excellent state employees who haven't been well compensated the last few years.  But changing the system won't help.  We don't have the money, we can't pay it out.  The bill won't do anything to change that at all."

Rep. Amy Stephens, R-El Paso, said that we have "wonderful working state employees," but her husband hasn't gotten a pay increase in three years, so this is a tough time to add more dollars to state salaries.

Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, bill sponsor, said that the legislature holds control over any appropriations for salary increases.  The bill, he says, allows the state to help employees such as state patrol officers get a raise even if they do not change positions.

GOP against more money for public employees

The bottom line is this:  Republicans and some Dems, for various reasons, want a new evaluation system for teachers, with no additional compensation.  Democrats want to give state employees, with satisfactory performance, additional money under certain circumstances.  Republicans are against that. 

If both bills pass, a lot of employee evaluation will happen, but only state employees will receive additional compensation under prescribed circumstances.  Public educators, on the other hand, are unlikely to get any more money for a long time. 

How the increase in the volume of teacher evaluation, along with state-determined performance criteria, along with no additional overall compensation, along with no dollars for professional development, along with no dollars for increased entry level salaries will improve overall teacher performance remains unclear.

This post was published on May 5, 2010. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.

Two issues are guaranteed to make political parties call each other out: redistricting and reapportionment. Both happen after the 2010 census. Representative Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville, drew the first weapon with HB10-1408, a bill to cross out criteria the Republicans set in 2003 for redistricting.

Guardrails or handcuffs
Republicans call criteria "guardrails" that should guide these very political processes. Democrats see guardrails as "handcuffs." The criteria, in listed order, say that legislators and the courts, if necessary, should:

+  Not use "non neutral" factors such as distribution of political parties and vote performance.
+  Use only "neutral" factors, in the following order:

1. Apply mathematical population equality between districts, justifying variances according to the US constitution.
2. Comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
3. Respect political subdivisions, such as counties and municipalities.
4. Maintain communities of interest, such as ethnic, cultural, economic trade area, geographic, and demographic factors.
5. Ensure compactness, with the aggregate linear distance of all district boundaries as tight and short as possible.

Democrats see redistricting criteria as tools for Republicans
Democrats believe that these "handcuffs" favor Republicans, which they probably do since Republicans drew up the "guardrails." For example, Democrats generally live in urban areas, so they're more concentrated in political subdivisions such as counties and municipalities. Republicans tend to be more distributed, so tight boundaries favor them. Democrats will win elections by 80 percent, Republicans by 60 percent, but there will be more 60 percent districts than 80 percent.

Republicans see Colorado Supreme Court as Dem stooge
Republicans believe that taking away "guardrails" means that liberal, activist courts, which they believe describes the Colorado Supreme Court, will run roughshod over their interests. They believe this occurred when the court threw out Republican redistricting in 2003 and put together its own plan. Republicans believe that CD7 was redrawn to give Democrats a better chance of winning the district, which they did when Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D) took the seat.

Reapportionment v. redistricting
The Republican fallback position is to turn to reapportionment rules for redistricting. Reapportionment occurs when state Senate and House seats are redrawn, and the main factors for reapportionment include population and compactness.

Scott Martinez, an attorney with Hart and Hart who worked on the 2003 redistricting, says that redistricting and reapportionment are apples and oranges. Reapportionment involves smaller populations that can be contained within counties or municipalities. Congressional seats spread across much wider territory, so compactness and boundary line contiguity is much more difficult.

Surprise: parties don't trust each other
Bottom line is that both parties seek some advantage in redistricting and reapportionment. Republicans don't trust the current Colorado Supreme Court, and Democrats don't trust Republican criteria. At last sighting, Rep. Weissmann was huddled with Rep. Mike May, R-Douglas County, to cut a deal. A steady in and out of legislators in the committee room indicates that lots of maneuvering is still going on. More later.

 

This post was published on April 28, 2010. Permalink ». Comments are disabled at this time.