How the rally at the Capitol rocked; and what backers of the House plan aren’t getting about merit pay
by Rob D’Amico (Follow on Twitter @damicoaustin and @TexasAFT)
‘Solidarity Forever’ rings out loud in the Capitol rotunda at the Texas Red for Ed Rally
Monday was a special day, since it’s always great to see so many school employees from around the state gather at the Capitol to both rally and visit with their legislators. The San Antonio Express-News had a good piece on the event — about as good as you can get trying to sum up a days-worth of activity, which also included Texas AFT holding a morning press conference.
Meanwhile Houston Public Radio did a great job covering our local union — the Houston Federation of Teachers — coming in for the rally, while Texas Public Radio got a flavor of what San Antonio educators think before they departed for Austin. And as usual (since we do rallies every legislative session), there were plenty of TV crews there to catch the roaring rally attendees, like this one from CBS Austin.
Not covered to my knowledge — which is a shame — was a rendition of “Solidarity Forever” (with lyrics oriented to education) sung under the Capitol dome by hundreds. Capitol staff and legislators reported hearing it loud and clear in their offices. You can catch it on Facebook here.
House school finance bill gets a hearing, with its backers dismayed that objections arose to merit pay
Let me preface my item here by saying that the bigger news will be what emerges as a new House Bill 3 (a substitute version) next week after the House Public Education Committee heard almost 12 hours of testimony on the school-finance plan from a wide variety of educators, policy wonks, parents and others. That will be Committee Chair Rep. Dan Huberty’s opportunity to display some of the clean-up needed in the bill and possibly address some of the concerns from those testifying at the hearing. While $6 billion is a large amount of new money to pump into school finance, Texas AFT will continue to call it a significant down payment for what’s needed overall.
With that in mind, I will note one of the key problems with HB 3 that caused Texas AFT to testify “on” the bill instead of “for” it — some rather dangerous language on merit pay, mainly the high potential to tie it to student test scores. HB 3 includes $140 million for districts to offer teachers additional compensation to work at struggling campuses, but only teachers who have been designated as “effective” in their evaluations. Here’s a brief take on the issue from the Dallas Morning News:
The House bill gives districts flexibility over how to structure merit pay programs and identify top teachers. But teacher groups said they were concerned standardized STAAR testing would inevitably be used as a metric — especially since it’s one of the ways DISD teachers are evaluated.
Sunset High School teacher Andrew Kirk told The Dallas Morning News that he has benefited from DISD’s merit pay program, but he’s concerned that the way teachers are judged favors those who were working in schools with the lowest percentage of poor students.
He also said teachers have become laser focused on standardized testing, to the detriment of more well-rounded instruction.
“The main component that drives this system is testing,” he said. “It really does crowd out a lot of creativity in classrooms.”
And a bit more from the Austin American-Statesman:
Officials with the Texas State Teachers Association and the Texas American Federation of Teachers did not testify in support of the bill because of concerns about the merit pay provision. They said they don’t necessarily have a problem incentivizing teachers to teach at low-income campuses. But, they said, they would feel more comfortable with the bill if it explicitly said the extra pay set aside for teachers wasn’t tied to student’s performance on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.
“Part of our opposition to the merit pay system is the potential over-reliance on the STAAR test, an exam that has not been determined to be valid or reliable for determining a teacher’s true influence on students,” said Patty Quinzi, legislative counsel for the Texas American Federation of Teachers.
She also said until teachers are paid more, lawmakers shouldn’t be talking about merit pay, especially since the bill doesn’t contain an across-the-board pay raise as found in Senate Bill 4.
Note: Quinzi never mentioned the $5,000 pay increase, but she hammered home the point that “…we need reasonable pay, before we can talk about merit pay.” She went on to say that the opposition to incentivized pay comes in part from tying it to the STAAR test or other standardized test scores.
Rep. Ken King (R-Canadian) stressed the bill was designed to allow districts to determine who is an effective teacher, and that process didn’t have to include STAAR, so he queried Quinzi on what could be done to make the merit pay more palatable.
Quinzi responded: “….We would feel more comfortable if there was a state-level prohibition against the use of the STAAR test.” King replied, “And I have no problem putting that in there.”
Folks who have actually read the 186-page bill have discovered that it sets up a new statewide system — giving the commissioner of education wide authority to decide on its rules and structure — for designating teachers as “recognized, exemplary or mastery.” Further, it requires that performance evaluations to determine those designations be based partially on “reliable underlying student assessments used to evaluate student performance.”
Committee Chair Huberty said he was “alarmed” that Texas AFT and another teacher group would testify “on” the bill instead of “for” it, when the bill provided a substantial infusion of funding into public schools. Since many of the key legislators backing HB 3 also have showcased the Dallas ISD model using the STAAR test for evaluations, can one fault teacher groups for being so concerned about how merit pay will be structured?
Reinforcing the concern was testimony from one superintendent who is running an incentive program based on the Dallas model. When asked by committee members how she identified effective teachers, she said she sought a “third-party vendor,” gave them her student “data,” and then it was like “magic,” that she had a list of the 300 teachers in her district most effective at “growing students.” (I’ll report more on why this “magic” isn’t fair and doesn’t work in upcoming columns.)
By the end of Quinzi’s testimony, Huberty stressed he is willing to work toward a solution to the concerns. We’ll see how the bill changes next week.
