The first is a Policy Brief by Governor Gregoire highlighting what she sees as the next steps in education reform. The focus is on the new principal and teacher evaluation models based on instructional frameworks and the changes related to ratings and professional growth opportunities. The opening paragraphs in this Seattle Times article is interesting considering she is promoting the change as renewed professional growth opportunities.
Offering a blunt assessment of the state's failure to get rid of struggling teachers, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Tuesday proposed a tougher statewide evaluation system aimed at weeding out ineffective educators.
"The current system doesn't work," Gregoire said of teacher and principal ratings. "It's too broad. It doesn't help people grow. Teachers need to know what they're doing well, and where they can improve."
In an Education Week article she shares the need to ensure the public that we have quality educators in our state.
"We need to address this concern out there that we have bad teachers," Gregoire said. "For the most part, we have very, very good teachers. We want to make sure the public feels confident that we have everybody at the proficiency-or-above level."
Considering that some have been working on this for two years with support from OSPI and that we started our work this year, the timing of the announcement is interesting especially given the significant budget issues confronting her and legislators in Olympia. Superintendent Dorn says he hasn’t seen the details of her proposal and will be submitting his own bill by the end of the week. Doesn’t sound like a collaborative effort, more like competing bills and waste of energy and resources to me? I am trying to suspend my negative assumptions about what is driving the changes in teacher and principal evaluation, but this policy brief and article simply reinforce them.
The second announcement is from a Seattle Times article on the legislative action thus far in the special session. The title of the article says all one needs to know; State legislators settle on plan for down payment on shortfall. In essence they used a combination of cuts, transfers, and delayed payments to carve $480 million out of the $2 billion revenue shortfall. They prolonged the agony by leaving the difficult decisions for the regular session. The changes in this down payment will not be seen or felt by most in our school system, but stay tuned as those necessary to reach the $2 billion target could dramatically change this situation.
3 comments:
What is most infuriating about this article about evaluation is that we are in the middle of creating a new evaluation system. I am so tired of the Olympia politics. As we in Tahoma prepare to send a contingency down to Olympia to talk to our elected officials, I cannot help but think to myself, will it really do any good, do they really care. We will be sending a rare contingency also, made up of teachers, school board, admin, classified, and parents- all sending a unified message. But are the efforts really worth it. Time will tell but the whole state of education makes me sick and unfortunately makes me think that another line of work would be good. I am tired of fighting for the work I love, I am tired of feeling my best is not good enough in the public eye, and I am really tired of people who do not do my job day in and day out thinking they know what our profession does not need. I have a button that speaks to my daily frustration with this, it reads..."Those Who Can, Teach. Those Who Cannot, Pass Laws About Teaching"
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I am not always the most sensitive guy, but it seems Scott's a little fired up. In all honesty, I'm kind of fired up, too.
I have a lot of ideas, Scott, of how we can put pressure on the stakeholders to which the politicians DO listen. We should talk over break, maybe while watching some football, and talk about some actions we can start.
If we act sooner, rather than later, we may be able to help sway the discussion in the legislature's regular session.
Jonathan
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