One plan worth supporting
Published 3:30 pm Monday, August 23, 2010
A teacher-contract showdown in Seattle Public Schools has the rapt attention of education stakeholders throughout the state.
The school board is taking a strong — and, we think, correct — stand in favor of using student achievement as a key factor in evaluating teachers. It’s also proposing to put school principals in charge of deciding who works in their buildings, rather than letting seniority dictate teaching assignments. Both steps make fundamental sense, and would hold schools more accountable for student learning.
The teachers union — the Seattle Education Association — is pushing back, and with the start of the school year looming, a strike is possible. We encourage the school board to stick to its position, creating a positive reform model other districts can follow.
The school board’s proposal on teacher evaluations is hardly radical. It would use two years’ worth of test-score data as one of four measures of teacher performance. Teachers would be assigned one of five ratings (currently there are just two), and only new teachers would be required to participate. Current teachers would be encouraged to do so by a modest financial incentive — a 1 percent salary boost for two years.
It’s true that teachers aren’t the only influence on student achievement. Parenting matters, as do family income and other factors. But research continues to show that a high-quality teacher matters more than, say, a small difference in class size. Common sense says that holding teachers — as well as schools — at least partly accountable for student growth is an important step toward reducing dropout rates and racial/cultural achievement gaps.
Union leaders argue that linking test scores and teacher evaluations encourages myopic “teaching to the test.” If student growth is just one of four measurements — along with evaluations by other teachers, the currently-used professional-practice standard and a measure of whole-school growth — such fears seem overblown.
The school board’s other key proposal, letting principals decide which teachers to hire, makes one wonder why this isn’t already the practice.
The proposed mutual-consent policy would replace a seniority system by which senior teachers tend to flock to newer or otherwise-favored schools, leaving less experienced teachers at higher-poverty campuses. Professional and financial incentives should encourage a more equitable distribution of teaching talent throughout a school district.
For far too many Washington students, academic achievement is a foreign concept. It’s not a new problem, but new solutions have been few. Seattle Public Schools appears to be on to some.
