I was thinking that for me, that may be coffee.  I then proceeded to have a good laugh at myself over that.  Surely there is something more meaningful that sustains me in troubling times other than coffee.  Or not…

A better question was why was I thinking about sustainability on a Saturday morning?

I decided there were two good answers to that question.

The obvious answer (which I have found least likely to be the real answer) was that I had been at work until just shy of 8 PM the night before working. Yes, it was Friday. Yes, I am lame. Why do you ask these questions? If you have read ANY of my other ponderings, you already know these things.  It is April, which means I eat work for breakfast, lunch and dinner and sometimes I even eat it as a midnight snack. This is just part of what I have come to accept working in the world of education. In education, this is the last part of the Crossfit workout where your coach calls out that you have 60 seconds left and you are pushing yourself as hard as you can (given your weakened state from the rest of the ass kicking you have just endured) to finish strong, yet not so hard as to collapse from exhaustion before the 60 seconds are up. This is my life right now, living these 60 seconds (in education they are called April and May). I could pontificate about all the reasons that this would drive me to think about what sustains me, but you get it, right?

Another answer is that I spent the rest of my Friday night talking about education with a friend. (Yes, my entire day and night was consumed with education. You aren’t really surprised are you? It’s like a disease I like having, this education thing. And when have I EVER been known to do something half way. Never.)  She came over and we were talking about her teaching career and the twists and turns it has taken. The central theme was sustainability. She was asking me, how can I sustain myself in my chosen career (when everything else falls away)? What a great question.

We agreed that you must be in a position where you are allowed to do your best work and use your strengths. We agreed that leadership in your school and district matters. This got me thinking about myself as a leader and all the things I still lack and need to improve upon. I am a work in progress and will put in the time and effort to improve myself. That I can control.  Then I proceeded to think about all the things I can’t control (which bothers me because I am a control freak), which naturally led me to think about Senate Bill 191. For those of you who aren’t educators or don’t live in Colorado, it’s a bill that will change how educators are evaluated. There are a number of things I don’t like about it. I really had to think about it to decide what was assaulting my sensibilities the most. Here is what I came up with.

First, let me say, I am a fan of accountability. I believe in people being fired if they aren’t doing a good job – myself included. I believe in having expectations that you must live up to and in having evidence that you have done what you said you would do. What I am not a fan of is being told how I must do that by people who know little to nothing about the field in which I work. What I am not a fan of is people with good intentions developing systems that are not sustainable and are not proven to work.  And where is the exemplar? Guess what? There isn’t one. Talk about poor instructional practices. If you are going to pretend you know about education, you might want to go to some lengths to impress upon others that you may actually have some acumen.

To me the height of the irony is that there is an intense focus on assessments used with students in schools and ensuring that they are appropriate, reliable and valid and yet, the state feels it appropriate to mandate how educators will be assessed without any data to support their decision.

What does the state feel the purpose of assessing/evaluating educators is? Purpose should drive process (or so says Bruce Wellman and I agree with him). What’s the purpose? Is it accountability? To help educators learn and grow?

Or is it a gotcha system by which we allow potentially ineffective leaders to arbitrarily fire teachers? It smacks of the last one if you ask me…

Question answered. This is why I was thinking about what sustains me when all else falls away. I know what sustains me. I hope my beloved educators have something to sustain them.

All Democratic Senators voted for the bill along with three Republican Senators: Greg Brophy (Wray), Larry Crowder (Alamosa), and Owen Hill (Colorado Springs).

SB 33 now moves to the House where the House Education Committee will hear it tomorrow. CEA supports the bill and works in a broad coalition which is pushing the bill.

A second CEA-backed bill, HB 1220, won approval in the House Education Committee yesterday. The committee voted 10-2 to pass the bill which would clarify current law by ensuring that individual teacher and principal evaluations are confidential, not published, and available only to administrators and others in school districts who are authorized to see them.

HB 1220 would not limit the publication of aggregate data about evaluations, as long as no data was linked to an individual educator. The bill’s sponsor is Rep. Joe Salazar (D-Thornton). In addition to CEA’s support, the bill has support from the State Council for Educator Effectiveness, CASE, CASB, and the Quality Teacher Commission.

As passed by the House, HB 1345 maintains the average per-student spending at the current level of $6,474.

School funding is complicated. Calculations include a “negative factor,” ironically used to cut funding by increasing the statewide per-student base dollar amount and applying three other factors (district student population, cost of living in a district’s geographic area, and the number of at-risk students in a district). The result is a “negative factor,” then applied against a district’s total program dollars to generate a reduction in state funding.

The bottom line is that Colorado K-12 funding is a billion dollars less than where it should be under Amendment 23.

We need look no further than the facts about our K-12 student population to understand the significance of chronic underfunding:
- Since 2001, Colorado’s student population has grown nearly 12 percent per year. This year 854,265 students attend our public schools.
- Almost half of Colorado’s students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, but the State provides funding for only those eligible for free lunch under federal guidelines.
- The number of K-12 English language learners has steadily increased over the last decade.

Add the cost of implementing new K-12 laws passed in the last five years and the underfunding of Colorado’s public schools is staggering. The state study on the implementation of “CAP4K,” the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, estimates its overall cost at $206 million, from one-time preparation costs to ongoing implementation.

That’s just one new law. What will the cost be to implement SB 191, the teacher and principal effectiveness law, in 178 school districts?

We urge the Senate Education Committee to keep the funding in HB 1345. The bill is a first step in filling the terrible $1 billion gap and shoring up our failed funding system, as we work to find a more sustainable funding system for the future.

Our students depend on us to invest in them today – so they can succeed in school and become the citizens and the workforce Colorado needs.

For the uninitiated, the Colorado Legislature meets for 120 weekdays. There are 100 legislators: 65 members of the House (“State Representatives”) and 35 members of the Senate (“State Senators”). We have a great link on our web site that shows how a bill is passed.

It is likely CEA members will get involved in at least four major legislative issues: school funding; rules for the implementation of Senate Bill 191 on educator effectiveness and the evaluation of teachers and principals; early childhood literacy; and innovation schools.

In November, Governor John Hickenlooper released his budget proposal for the 2012-13 school year: an $89 million reduction in K-12 funding, about $160 per student. This new cut would put school funding $1.1 billion behind where we should be, according to Amendment 23. While the Governor’s proposed $89M cut is smaller than predicted, it would have a huge negative impact in 178 districts. On the positive side, if state revenues rise because tax collections increase, the $89 million could become less of a cut to schools.

We will be working with many education stakeholders on literacy and the third-grade reading statute, the Colorado Basic Literacy Act. The law has not been updated since 1997. As we work on literacy issues, we will keep in mind our core values around student achievement. We believe in a continuum of high quality opportunities to help all students succeed, including quality early childhood education that provides children with the right start to academic success; student-focused interventions; a comprehensive assessment plan for each student, not one high stakes test; and quality professional development and support from literacy experts for all teachers.

Watch for frequent posts about the Legislature and public education right here every week.

One of the first bills is SB-001, introduced by Sen. Bob Bacon (D-Ft. Collins) and intended to identify any “excess” state money and use it to offset cuts in the state’s share of K-12 funding. Other early education bills: HB 1008 would reduce the number of PERA participants on the PERA Board of Trustees; HB 1048 would allow private school tax credits.

Governor John Hickenlooper, sworn in Tuesday, gives his first State of the State speech in the Capitol at 11 today.

Across the street, the State Board of Education continues its January meeting with two new members: Deborah Scheffel, CD 6, and Paul Lundeen, CD 5. Both begin six-year terms. Angelika Schroeder, who was originally appointed to the State Board, continues her term for two more years and represents CD 2.

These three join Bob Schaffer (CD 4), who was re-elected as the board’s chairman; Marcia Neal (CD 3), elected vice-chair; Elaine Gantz Berman (CD 1); and Jane Goff (CD 7).

While the Legislature and State Board meet and the new Governor speaks, teachers are tuned in to the work of the State Educator Effectiveness Council. It begins a three-day retreat today to put the final touches on its recommendations for the implementation of SB 10-191, the teacher evaluation bill from the last legislative session. The council will present its recommendations to the State Board of Education in February and begin a public review of its ideas. We’ll know more about the council’s recommendations and review timeline soon.

But Colorado did not win and the Denver Post resumed its unwarranted criticism of CEA for not signing on to the application.

It goes pretty much without saying that everyone who is dedicated to public education, especially teachers and education support professionals who work with students every day, are concerned about this second loss of significant funding for Colorado schools. We know how desperately our schools need more funding.

But the Post’s August 25 editorial presented a one-sided, inaccurate picture of the decision to not award Colorado the federal grant. We believe it’s shameful for the Post to react as it did.

While it is true that CEA’s decision to not participate in the second round of Race to the Top had an impact, many factors appeared to play a larger role in the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to bypass Colorado – the most important of which is an apparent bias against “local control” states. Any third grader could look at a map of the states that received the funding and see that there is at least the appearance of bias against Western states with local control.

Other factors also played a role in the decision, such as the state’s continued struggle to close the achievement gaps in student learning; the lack of specificity in Colorado’s application regarding school principal training and support; and a wide disparity between the high and low scores on Colorado’s application.

To say the least, it is dismaying to see the Post, the leading newspaper in the state, go off on an unfounded rant about the role of teacher involvement in the Race to the Top decision. Our Association strongly supported the first round last winter and worked tirelessly to find common ground among many stakeholders so we could support the second round.

The Post ignored the fact that passing Senate Bill 191 was supposed to give Colorado the points it needed to secure the federal funding – but, in fact, the existence of the new law did not persuade the reviewers and did not give the state an edge in the competition.

It is heartening to see that, among other media and opinion leaders, there has been a great deal of thoughtful analysis about why Colorado lost out on the funding and very little finger-pointing.

In her public comments last week, CEA President Beverly Ingle referred to the new breed of competitive grants as “reform on the run.” As educators, we know that thoughtful, sustainable education policy is needed. Thus, we will continue to be a leading voice for a collaborative, constructive approach to providing a quality education for every student. We leave the blame game to others who are obviously much better suited for it.

SB 191 aimed for far-reaching changes to teacher and principal evaluation, a system that has historically been the responsibility of school districts with only simple guidelines in state statute. There were more than 200 proposed amendments to the lengthy bill in three weeks.

Our Association views fair, credible teacher-principal evaluation as a pillar of a solid public education system  – along with time to teach and plan; parent involvement and support; meaningful mentoring, coaching, and professional development; small classes and adequate facilities; and all education employees working together to support student achievement and school improvement.

So, we have never disagreed with the idea that the current evaluation law, written 25 years ago, needs to be improved. But SB 191 definitely infringed on the role of the brand new Educator Effectiveness Council, established in December by Governor Bill Ritter. We opposed the bill from the outset as we wanted the council to do its work without predetermined outcomes – and the Legislature to set the parameters for a new evaluation system after that. Because SB 191 is not about good teaching, good learning, or good planning, we said, “Not so fast!”

True, the bill passed. But it’s not a well-written bill and it won’t — bingo! — make every child succeed in school and graduate from high school. The sponsors are wrong about all the magic changes in student achievement SB 191 will make overnight. We did achieve several gains by working with legislators, however, and they are worth mentioning here:

1. We stopped the bill from going too fast – extending the implementation timeline for by five years, giving the Council for Educator Effectiveness a sensible lenght of time to do its work and for us to test and improve the evaluation system.

2. We codified and protected the Council so that it will make all the recommendations about how we improve the current teacher evaluation system, no matter who the next Governor is.

3. The Council’s recommendations on a laundry list of evaluation system elements goes to the Legislature, not only the State Board of Education. This is a very positive improvement in the bill.

4. A big gain in the bill is portability of nonprobationary status. A teacher who has nonprobationary status has always been penalized when moving to a new school district, being forced back to probationary status. SB 191 ensures that an effective teacher can move without penalty.

5. No probationary teacher will have to start over just because we’re getting a new evaluation system. The law protects probationary teachers who are working to earn nonprobationary status, letting them count their current “satisfactory” evaluations toward the new “effective” rating.

6. We  made sure that characteristics of various student populations are considered when using “academic growth” as a measure of effectiveness, including special education and student mobility.

7. We achieved the first statewide guarantee of an appeals right for invalid, unfair evaluations. This can be locally bargained and, even if it’s not, at a minimum teachers have access to a hearing before a third-party neutral who makes a final decision that districts must follow.

The 15-member Educator Effectiveness Council, with three CEA members, has a huge responsibility, beginning next Monday with the job of defining “effectiveness” and how to measure it. The council will determine how a new evaluation system will work; how 178 districts will develop their own systems; what training will be provided to principals and teachers; and more.

Our Association has supported and been involved in every education reform measure in this state – CAP4K, longitudinal growth, accountability, accreditation. We’ve always supported and been involved in teacher-principal evaluation too, and we will assist the Educator Effectiveness Council so it successfully completes its work.

Nearly every Democrat on the committee voted against the bill: Reps. Michael Merrifield, Judy Solano, Debbie Benefield, Cherylin Peniston, Sue Schafer, and Nancy Todd. Two Democrats, Rep. Karen Middleton and bill sponsor Rep. Christine Scanlan, voted with the Republicans to pass the bill (Reps. Tom Massey, Frank McNulty, Carole Murray, Ken Summers, and Scott Tipton).

Please join Association members across the state in thanking the six House Education Committee members who spoke passionately about why they believe the bill is the wrong way for Colorado to go and voted No. Email them at CEA’s Legislative Action Center.  Rep. Michael Merrifield, a retired Colorado Springs high school music teacher, said, before casting his vote, “the bill is based on a faulty premise: that if you get rid of bad teachers, everything in public education will be fine.”

Though CEA continues to oppose SB 191, we are working with legislators to remove the punitive sections of the bill and make the work of the Governor’s Educator Effectiveness Council even more significant than it is in Gov. Ritter’s Executive Order.

Here in Colorado, the nation’s second largest teacher’s union, the American Federation of Teachers, has cut ranks from the nation’s largest, the National Education Association, in supporting Senate Bill 191.  The Colorado Education Association has enlisted its national president to combat the bill’s passage.

The good aspects of the bill are that it seeks to inject more accountability on the part of teachers, both probationary and tenured.  Under its legislation, any tenured teacher receiving two consecutive years of “ineffective” evaluations would be demoted to probationary status.  Unsurprisingly, this is of major concern for major teacher’s unions, but it’s difficult to argue to the layperson in favor of seniority over efficacy.

Which brings up another point.  The only way the sponsors of the bill were able to stoke AFT support was to include amendments promising that veteran status would remain an advantage when “effective” teachers face layoffs, two teachers need to provide input to the principal on hiring and transfer decisions, and an appeals process must be implemented in situations where a tenured teacher is demoted to probationary status.

All good in concept, although veteran teachers don’t always make good teachers.  With more than 300,000 teacher layoffs expected or occurring across the country, this is an acute worry.  Especially in the low-income districts of Los Angeles and New York, the young up-and-comers are being discarded in favor of the old hands.  At the outset, this is devastating to the principle of competition because, as Ruben Navarrette says, it highlights the fact that one segment of the teaching workforce is immune from dismissal.  This undercuts any incentive to remain more effective than the next teacher, thereby inhibiting real quality.

Younger teachers are also typically assigned to underprivileged schools.  Liquidating their services hurts most those who need the most help.  The ACLU and NAACP have initiatives underway to see teacher cuts spread out equitably across low-income and high-income school districts. 

New teacher training strategies, which would ideally be the most effective thus far conceived (though this is easily debatable), are better used on fledgling instructors who are still forming their educational approaches.  Long-tenured teachers run the risk of firmly-held stances and lethargic paradigms.

There are too many restrictions emphasizing seniority.  Bill proposals nationwide are seeking to untie administrators’ hands, giving them more say in who is hired and fired.  Done adroitly, a new system in which potential and effectiveness are more highly considered could be put in place.

Teacher-evaluation systems that rely on tenureship too much risk losing effective and young (read: passionate) teachers.  I’m not saying veteran teachers aren’t passionate, they would have to be to get to where they are, but a proactive, gregarious, earnest, and intelligent young teacher should not be thrown to the curb simply because another teacher has a few more years under his belt.  Inviting the competition across the board, free of union oversight, would go far to increase standards and improve accountability.

1. Principal consent: Section 11 of the bill stipulates that a teacher be allowed to teach at or transfer into a school only with the principal’s consent.
2. Unending probation: The Senate added Section 14 to the bill. It allows a district to keep teachers on probationary status indefinitely. As a result, teachers will remain at-will employees who can be fired at any time without cause.
3. Reduction-in-force determined by “effectiveness:” Section 12 of the bill requires districts to adopt policies where “effectiveness” would be the most significant factor when deciding which teachers to lay off. This would trump collective bargaining agreements and go into effect before the Governor’s Council on Educator Effectiveness researches and recommends what “teacher effectiveness” really is.
4. Loss of due process based on “effectiveness:” Section 7 of the bill requires that, starting in the 2013-14 school year, a teacher must show three years of demonstrated “effectiveness” to gain nonprobationary status, and the teacher will become probationary again with two consecutive years of demonstrated “ineffectiveness.”  A teacher is allowed to appeal an “ineffective” evaluation, but that appeal is to the district superintendent.

No research supports the punitive measures in SB 191 as a means to improve student achievement, stem the drop-out rate, or prepare, recruit, and retain high quality teachers. What the research does show is that teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions – and that what makes a difference and has a direct impact on student learning is:
-   time to teach, plan, and collaborate with other teachers;
-   parent involvement and support for their children’s entire experience in school;
-   meaningful mentoring and ongoing coaching for new teachers;
-   high quality professional development linked to student needs and instructional strategies;
-   small classes and adequate school facilities and resources;
-   and skilled, knowledgeable school principals, teacher leaders, and leadership teams who work together to build professional learning communities that support ongoing school improvement.

This isn’t a bunch of education jibberish. We know it’s what works.

These quality factors aren’t in SB 191. That’s because SB 191 is not about good teaching and learning.

CEA has supported and been involved in every education reform measure in this state – CAP4K, longitudinal growth, accountability, and accreditation. Our members know what works in public schools and it’s not SB 191.

Everyone knows that Colorado K-12 funding is appalling. Colorado is in the bottom 10 states in the nation. We spend $1,919 less per student than the national average. Our neighbors invest more than we do – New Mexico $1,452 more; Kansas $2,285 more; Nebraska $3,265 more; Wyoming $7,748 more!

The Legislature rescinded $130 million in state funding for this year and slashed a quarter of a billion dollars for next year. Educators anticipate that K-12 cuts will be worse next year. The result? Districts are dismantling programs and dropping people at a time when education is more important to students and their families than ever before.

The Legislature is compelling districts to pay for SB 191, while committing only to “gifts, grants, and donations” ($250,000 in each of two years, but paid for by charity). Districts will bear the burden of a new evaluation system, new student tests to measure teachers’ effectiveness, and more principals to evaluate every teacher every year, increasing districts’ administrative costs.

Colorado’s Phase I Race to the Top application included a whole lot of money for a new evaluation system, so the Legislature must know exactly how much the state planned to spend:

• $5.7M for a nonprofit to “conduct research, analyze data, and engage vendors to evaluate and support the implementation of teacher and principal evaluation systems,” including making recommendations to the Governor’s Educator Effectiveness Council, school boards, and administrators.
• $605,000 for the Governor’s Council for Educator Effectiveness to define effectiveness and develop the evaluation system from the ground up.
• $67.8M to “roll out high quality evaluation systems” – At the time the Phase I application was proposed, this money was only for SOME school districts, not all. SB 191 applies to all 178 districts.

That’s $75M just to get up and running. Then there’s principal training. Lack of time and adequate training for principals are generally cited as two big obstacles to ensuring that teachers’ classroom instruction is evaluated in a manner that helps the teacher improve instruction. As one example, Aurora Public Schools spends approximately $5,000 on training for each principal. (There are about 2,700 K-12 school principals in Colorado and we’d need more for every-year teacher evaluations.)Come on, lawmakers, get real. We don’t even have enough money to implement CAP4K. A recent cost study of SB 08-212 (CAP4K) estimates the school district cost of switching to new content standards at more than $125 million. And that’s just the first phase of CAP4K implementation. A couple of weeks ago, House members amended HB 1013 to push forward timelines on CAP4K initial implementation, using the term “as soon thereafter as fiscally practicable” to indicate that some timelines in the original legislation may have to be changed because the state doesn’t have the money to meet them.

As one teacher said to a legislator today, “The district I work in needed to cut 19 million dollars out of next year’s budget because of the state budget cuts. Our district lost about 180 people/positions. Our school lost its literacy resource teacher and our math coach. Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes are now planned at 31/32 children next year. How can the state ask us to spend MORE money on evaluations and on a new evaluation system when we are already cutting resources that could help our students? I think we need a better evaluation system too, but now, when money is tight, is not the time to do it.”

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