AUGUSTA, Maine — The Legislature’s Education Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved an amended bill that seeks to set up a uniform system for evaluating Maine’s public school teachers.
The bill, LD 1858, is part of a comprehensive education package introduced in February by Gov. Paul LePage and Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen.
LD 1858 creates an “effectiveness rating” system for teachers and administrators that includes markers for students’ progress. Any teacher who receives two consecutive years of “ineffective” scores by an independent evaluator could have his or her teaching contract canceled.
The proposal also requires school districts to implement professional development opportunities for those who score low in the rating system and sets more rigorous teaching qualifications.
The legislation received mixed reviews during a public hearing last week, but since has been amended to accommodate many of the concerns raised.
“Of all the education bills this session, this one has the potential to positively impact education more than any other,” Bowen said in a statement Wednesday. “The bill goes to the very heart of what we know has the greatest impact on learning: the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders. The best curriculum and learning materials in the world are of no use to us unless we have effective educators in our schools.”
The bill now goes to the House and Senate for consideration.
Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, said the amendments to the bill made it much more palatable, particularly language that allows due process in the event a teacher is given poor reviews and terminated.
“Of course, we’d like more time to look into this, but they are on a time schedule that is different from ours,” Alfond said, referring to the LePage administration.
The Maine Education Association, which opposed the bill, worked with the education commissioner and the committee on the amendments, but union president Chris Galgay said he still doesn’t support it.
If passed by the Legislature, the system would be phased in between this fall and the 2014-15 school year. Between now and then, the Education Department and the Legislature would adopt rules for how the teacher evaluation system would work.
Alfond said he still has concerns about what a teacher evaluation system might cost. He said Colorado passed a similar law recently and has spent millions putting it into practice.
Even Bowen said he doesn’t know what it will cost.
“We haven’t done the digging into the cost yet because we need to get a piece of legislation passed first,” the commissioner said during last week’s public hearing.
As written, the cost of implementing the system would be included in the state’s essential programs and services funding model. Some said that amounts to an unfunded mandate for local communities.
There is a fiscal note attached to the bill, which means the Appropriations Committee will have to weigh in before final passage. If the financial concerns persist through the legislative process, the bill’s passage in the House and Senate could be in jeopardy.
LD 1858 is one of four bills put forth by Gov. LePage to change education in Maine.
Earlier this week, the Education Committee approved LD 1865, a bill that enhances career and technical education.
Two more bills that are part of the administration’s agenda will be debated on Thursday. One deals with expanding school choice; the other with allowing public funding for religious schools.
If that’s what our education commissioner knows, that teacher effectiveness has the greatest impact on learning, then he doesn’t know much. Teacher effectiveness is about 4th or 5th on the list. I would also like to ask where is the money going to come for the professional development that schools will now have to spring for?
Mr. Bowen stated, “The bill goes to the very heart of what we know has the greatest impact on learning: the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders.” BULL! The only people ignorant enough to believe that are the one’s who never had PARENTS growing up. Get real Mr. Bowen or go away!
I assume you are not a teacher and have never been in the classroom. As a teacher I see bad educators every day and they steal from children. Yes, they steal their potential and futures. Anything to improve the lax, lackluster and ludicrously non-uniform system in this state has my backing.
We should believe what you “say” here because…you claim to be a teacher but don’t know how to use conjunctions? Also, I must say that I don’t quite understand what it is you don’t like. Something to do with people wearing or not wearing uniforms?
From what I gather we have a teachers word about the incompetence they see daily versus Relaxer’s word from the couch or wherever he relaxes….hmm this is tough…I’m not sure I can even decide…..hmmm…ummm…
You guys are killing me..keep it up!
Too bad the kids don’t get a fair shake by these defenders of the incompetent. Its all about the union dough and perks to these reactionaries.
You do not have to belong to the union to be a teacher in Maine. Many communities do not have a teacher’s union at all. As for the union dough, do you know any teachers who are rich? I don’t. There always has been a way to fire incompetant teachers, but it takes an administrator who knows what they are doing and who is consistant to do it. I like the idea that this new system will evaluate administrators as well as the teachers.
Knowing how to properly use conjunctions is not a requirement to be a teacher. In the district in which I reside, spelling, grammar and so many other common and uncommon mistakes are prevalent. In the 20 years I’ve lived in the district, I’ve often marveled at how some teachers are able to keep their job when they obviously still need to get their ‘grade 10’. I wanted to volunteer to edit the notices they send home to make them not look so silly. Watching the movie “The Matrix” to help explain transcendentalism is poor teaching enough, but it is worse when 1) quite a few parents silently object and 2) there is a ‘qualified’ instructor of this subject at the nearby local college. I do believe that if parents want a teacher gone because they do not appear to be any more intelligent than the students they teach, they need to get active.
That’s a sad example! I hope I didn’t make any typos or other errors!
And the way to get good teachers is increase salary, not create a heavy-handed police agency based on Republican anti-intellectualism.
The GOP will do their best to turn everyone into a birther and climate-denier.
If it wasn’t for the GOP rural communites wouldn’t have a chance. The GOP makes sure that rual communites receive more money per student tahan largers communites. This money allows the communites to hire better educators and this legislation will allow them to rid themselves of bad teachers. We all know that most teachers are democrats and are up in arms about this and the bad teachers should be. The union won’t protect them any longer. Thank you Gov and Mr Bowen and all of Maines great teachers.
Increasing salaries does not make a good teacher!! You are either good at it, or you are not!!
Yes, I am a teacher….I and others received a substantial increase in our salary thanks to the forced consolidation by the previous administration. Honestly, I am not a better teacher because of it! Further, if money is what motivates people, then I would suggest that there are many high paying jobs that offer, and will always offer, a much better opportunity to get rich. Teachers don’t teach because they want to get rich.
So will the same standards and required termination be applied to teacher’s at religious schools taking State money, Govenah ?
I agree with you Relaxin!
Power to the teachers union!
To hell with the kids and their futures!
And Im right behind you! I agree with StillRelaxin that there is not a single teacher in Maine who would be evaluated as not worthy of teaching. In all my years going to public school and then two colleges I never encountered one teacher that should not have been there, not one teacher who showed a dislike of kids, not one teacher who instead of teaching ran a continuing study hall.
StillExLaxing and Sprucy for head of the teachers unions! Who cares about the kids anyway right..they get all kids of goodies all the time anyway, we want our share!
Wow! You’ve had some incredibly good luck! I’ve seen plenty of old teachers who should have retired long before their time was officially “up.”
I have too. I was being sarcastic in my post. Apparently some posters think that evaluating teachers is something that would be horrible to do.
Ahh, now it’s clear. For you, Mr. LePage (ALEC) and Mr. Bowen it’s all about harming unions not helping kids. Why didn’t Mr. LePage and Mr. Bowen just say so. WOOPS, was that supposed to be a secret? You can’t blame me for letting that one out. Look at every conservative comment here. UNION-UNION-UNION, that’s all they can think and talk about. SOP for the GOP/Tea Party. Look everywhere and anywhere to harm middle class workers and any union that supports them.
Again, no school and no teacher will ever teach our children a thing until PARENTS begin parenting. Well unless of course we give our child to the school or to a teacher to raise without any inept interference from us.
I agree with you Occupiers!
Power to Education!!
To hell with the bagger neocons and their agendas!
Heavy bureaucratic presence, inflicted by ‘objective’ criteria, has strangled teacher morale and dulled the excitement of teaching and learning. It’s the Republican way of maintaining ignorance (such as the absurd view that global warming is a hoax).
You obviously have no idea what your talking about and once again resort to some strange attacks on Republicans. Too bad you care more about the unions than the kids and their futures. That is the real ignorance.
The bureaucracy of the teachers union you mean? Most teachers are good hard working folks. There are many that are far more interested in preaching politics then teaching children.
News flash!!!!!!
This just in Global Warming has been going on for millions of years….
Was there an ice berg on Mt Katahdin last year?
Will this same evaluation be used in private schools receiving money from the State of Maine, are there special rules that just hands the money over to the private or religious school with no evaluating tool to make sure that those teachers are also making sure that their teaching is effective?
So the affect or effect of the rearing or in put of the parent has no affect or effect on the child!!
No every body knows that conservatives believe that the government should be responsible for our children, since that seems to be their position time and time again (until it costs money of course).
I think it’s great that there will at least be a chance that the bad teachers will get pushed out as a result of this. The next goal will be to make the results of these evaluations available to the public.
Here here!
Too bad the union shills that posted above you only care about their noses in the trough and not the kids at the desks.
If you make the results public, then the open enrollment should pass as parents would have a way to determine the best schools.
Right, and the evaluations you get for your job should be open to the public too. I’m a former teacher and I don’t know any teacher who would want “bad” teachers in the classroom. If administrators would do their job in doing evaluations properly, then the teacher can and will be fired. As a union rep( I know, boo, hiss) for my district for many years< I’ve seen both sides of the coin.LePage and the r’s are bend on weakening unions as much as they can.That is their primary goal which they pretend it’s to the betterment of children.If the system they put in has any teacher input and is a fair and open system then it may work,If it’s a one size fits all, I can see it being used against older teachers who are the one that make the most money. Hard times will cause some to try to evaluate those at the top to get cheaper-not better- teachers.
Parents are children’s first teachers and when they fail to “Parent” children will never respond to any teacher. Do you get votes for telling people that simple truth? Probably not, so it must be someone else’s fault. What we need is another big new unfunded government program to fix everything up just like they did the last time. What was that last government success story again?
Steam of consciousness writing is no way to go through life, unless you are James Joyce of course.
Well said.
Yawn!!!!!
The last government success story is the fraud and corruption in Augusta exposed by the LePage administration.
And MEA, once again, lets its members down by “working with the commissioner” to make the effects of what could be a very bad law for its members just a little less bad.
As a teacher I see this as a good thing, there are good and bad teachers out there, just like there are good and bad cashiers at Wal-mart (I am one of those too – a good one not bad). I am evaluated at Wal-Mart once every 6 months, that should be the same at the school I work at. I worked at one time at the only School in the state that has merit based pay and found the process cumbersome but helpful. I only caution that any evaluation should not be based solely on test scores of students. I know many students (I was one of them a while back) that would intentionally earn a bad score to spite a teacher.
Too bad some of the posters above would rather have bad teachers teaching kids than say the LePage administration working WITH the MEA did a good thing. Blind and spiteful is no way to go through life.
Teacher at a day-care I assume?
Even Bowen said he doesn’t know what it will cost.
“We haven’t done the digging into the cost yet because we need to get a piece of legislation passed first,” the commissioner said during last week’s public hearing.
Really? Usually I make sure I know the cost of something before I commit to buying it. How else to know whether it’s affordable???
Most bills are supposed to have a cost attached to them. He really doesn’t care what it will cost since that cost will be placed upon the towns anyway. Get the bill passed before anyone can really see what it costs or does, that’s what is important. Another victory for ALEC.If it won’t take effect until 2014 , then they should do their “homework”.Oh, maybe they are worried that their majorities in the house and senate will disappear in November! One can only hope!
Now that’s a great way to solve problems in our education system.
Simply mindlessly attack the teachers.
Brilliant, really.
Most people in here say that its the teachers fault because the kids are not learning ?
It is not the teachers who have stultified curiousity, critial thinking, and imagination.
It is those who who want the public education system to be an efficient prison pipeline who have done so.
Don’t believe me?
Run my post by any Maine high schooler.
Let us know how it turns out…
Got a standardized test for curiousity? (Didn’t think so).
A test for critical thinking? (Geometry notwithstanding, as axioms are no longer taught in my school).
For imagination?
Our teachers work their tails (tales?) off fostering our kids’ curiousity, imagination, and critical thinking.
I still think the problem with our public education system is our government. If they would just get out of the way and let the teachers actually “teach”, our schools wouldn’t be in such a mess. I homeschool, but take my daughter to the local elementary school for PE and computer just to give her experience with a true “classroom” setting and different teachers and teaching styles.
In talking with the teachers and evaluating what my daughter is learning compared to her peers, I constantly hear the wistful yearning of her outside teachers being able to actually “teach” the way we are able to. Instead, they have certain mandates they must follow, standardized curriculum (whether they like the curriculum or not) and NCLB. These things stifle creativity and basically teach for the test.
For example, I recently asked the third-grade teacher (the grade my daughter is in) to assess her math level. I showed the teacher the work we were doing regarding fractions (reducing, mixed, equivalents, converting to decimals, ratios, etc). She sadly shook her head and said we were far ahead of her class because she wasn’t “allowed” to even start teaching fractions until 2 weeks before school ended. THEY HADN’T EVEN STARTED! I asked her how much the students would retain over the summer. She agreed that they would basically have to start all over again. To combat that, she is quietly starting each morning by giving some quick fraction mini-lessons before their day begins. I applaud her efforts.
This is just one example of how the government stifles the teachers’ ability to actually teach. Instead it’s one size fits all.
What we need to realize is it’s not all the parents’ fault and neither is it all the teachers’ fault. We get too bogged down playing the blame game rather than addressing the real problems; just like politics. There’s a lot of blame to go around and it’s not just on one side. What we need to do is be honest about that, stop the blame game, and get real about addressing the issues and solving them. Until we can do that, the system will never improve.
Anyone who is considering a career in teaching had better re think their approach ! Teaching is an impossible job with too many responsibilities and no authority. Lack of discipline in our public schools is a real big issue. Too many parents either will not or can not discipline their kids AND THESE PARENTS DO NOT WANT ANYONE ELSE TO DISCIPLINE THEIR CHILDREN EITHER !!
Great……come November, the electorate is going to approving an evaluation of the Legislators.
This bill is suggesting that teachers need motivation to work hard to provide the best education for children. Teachers don’t enter the profession for monetary compensation but rather to serve children. They aim to provide children with the resources to reach their full potential. No amount of compensation changes that core value motivating the profession. If we treated other respected professions to a subjective rubric from year to year who knows how many would be left standing.
Erika Burton, Ph.D
Stepping Stones Together, Founder
Empowering parental involvement in early literacy programs
http://www.steppingstonestogether.com