Letter to the Legislature
Letter to the Legislature
January 31, 2012
As you are aware, a ballot initiative being proposed by Stand for Children has been sent to the Legislature by the Secretary of State, given a bill number of H 3883 and referred to the Joint Committee on Education. We urge legislators not only to reject this proposal, but also to urge the proponents to withdraw their ballot initiative and support the implementation of the state’s new teacher evaluation process. Our concerns focus on the students of Massachusetts, who are not well served by the initiative being proposed.
Many of you have been visited by the outside lobbyists hired by Stand for Children. We believe they have distorted the truth about the progress that has been made toward creating a rigorous and fair teacher evaluation system in Massachusetts. Representatives of Stand for Children were a part of the process that created the very evaluation system that they now want to change.
As part of the Commonwealth’s successful Race to the Top application, the state and those who supported the proposal, including the MTA and Stand, committed to designing a framework that provided for student achievement to be among the criteria on which teachers would be evaluated. This evaluation tool, which encompasses MCAS test scores and other measures, is to be used in personnel decisions.
The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education established a 42-member task force of stakeholders to develop recommendations for regulations to implement the evaluation concept set forth in the RTTT application. The new evaluation process is being collaboratively negotiated and phased in over the next three years in all districts. Stand for Children was part of the task force, which met for seven months and sent regulations to Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester. The Commissioner, in turn, made a recommendation to the BESE, which passed regulations on evaluation in June 2011. Implementation of those regulations began last fall.
Secretary of Education Paul Reville said in November 2011: “I fear that the ballot initiative would set up a distracting and divisive battle, engendering an over-simplified public dialogue that would alienate educators and prevent us from achieving a variety of reform goals.”
Secretary Reville’s comment addresses several key issues, including the complexity of the proposed ballot initiative. Many of you were active participants in the passage of the Achievement Gap Bill of 2010, which put in place a system of accountability for educators, schools and districts that is in the first stages of implementation across the Commonwealth. Both this legislation and the new teacher evaluation process were designed to advance the goal that we all support: ensuring that students in our public schools receive an excellent education to prepare them for the future.
Policy changes in education should not be brought about by gimmicky slogans designed to make complex issues seem simple. Yet that is exactly the course that Stand is taking by asking voters to provide it with a quick political victory. Unfortunately, such an outcome would not improve education in the Commonwealth. Reform measures are already in place, and a thoughtful and deliberative process has been established to address the evaluation system in a way that truly serves our students.
Stand’s proposal is extremely long and complicated. It is made up of 11 different sections making changes to many different state laws. On Election Day, a voter can only give a yes or no answer. As legislators, you know that a ballot initiative is not the way to make complicated policy decisions. The Legislature has set up a process that allows for debate to determine whether in fact change is needed and, if so, to allow for refining a proposal so that a consensus can be built.
Putting a policy issue before the voters that the state has refused to deal with is one thing, but that is not the case where Stand’s proposal is concerned. As previously noted, Stand was very much involved in the process that brought change to the evaluation procedures. If the new evaluation process is not working when fully implemented, interested parties, including Stand, should utilize the deliberative legislative and regulatory processes to seek further changes. Using the initiative petition process to strong-arm legislators and force quick decisions on complex issues is not the answer. Indeed, taking this approach ill-serves the long-term interests of students, who should be front and center in this debate.
We urge you to reject H 3883 and ask Stand for Children to immediately withdraw its initiative petition.
Sincerely,
Organizations
Massachusetts AFL-CIO
American Federation of Teachers-MA
Massachusetts Elementary School Principals Association
Massachusetts Jobs with Justice
Massachusetts Parent Teacher Association
Massachusetts School Library Association
Massachusetts Teachers Association
Sue Freedman, Director, RTTT Human Resource Pilot Project Working Group for Educator Excellence
Kathy Kelly, former President of AFT-MA
Plaintiffs in the ballot question court case
Michael Flynn, 2008 MA Teacher of the Year, Southampton second grade teacher
Mary Ann Stewart, President of the Massachusetts Parent Teacher Association
Floris Wilma Ortiz-Marrero, 2011 MA Teacher of the Year, Amherst-Pelham Regional School teacher
Jon Saphier, President of Research for Better Teaching, Inc., and a resident of Carlisle
Jae Goodwin, 2010 MA Teacher of the Year, teaches and lives in Framingham
Geju Brown, Boston Public School Parent