Hearing Focuses On Meaning Of ​“Tenure” Reform

A New Haven mom who dropped out of high school headed to the state Capitol Tuesday with her 7‑year-old son to lobby for a bill that would tighten teacher evaluations — and, she argued, help her son avoid her fate.

Simona Williams (pictured), who lives in the Hill, took the day off from her job as a certified nursing assistant Tuesday to join hundreds of people seeking to weigh in at the Capitol on state education reform. She was No. 79 on a list of 103 members of the public who signed up to speak to the joint legislative Education Committee about Senate Bill 24, the governor’s wide-sweeping, 163-page education reform bill.

The bill includes, among other ideas, a proposal to revamp teacher evaluations based on student performance — and factor those evaluations into whether teachers get to keep tenure.

Williams was recruited by her cousin, who works at the New Haven-based education watchdog group ConnCAN, to lobby Tuesday in support of the bill.

That meant she spent most of her time waiting. As of 6:40 p.m., the committee hadn’t cracked the 30s on the list of public speakers. (Update: She finally ended up testifying at 10:30 p.m.)

Williams grew up in New Haven and attended James Hillhouse High School. In her high school days, she said, ​“there was no structure for me. I was running wild.” Living with family in West Haven, she ended up switching to West Haven High School and dropping out her senior year.

She’s now working on a high school diploma and looking out for her two kids: John, who’s a 2nd-grader at the Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School, and a 2‑year-old son. She argued that a more rigorous teacher evaluation system and tenure reform would reduce the number of teachers who glide through the year and ​“don’t care” — and create a more consistent quality of teaching across the state.

“I just want my son to have an A‑plus education anywhere he goes,” she said.

Elsewhere in the Legislative Office Building, Mary Loftus Levine, executive director of the Connecticut Education Association, agreed tenure should be reformed — but differed with Malloy on some of the details.

Under Malloy’s plan, teachers would have to earn and re-earn tenure based on performance evaluations. He would extend the initial period in which a teacher serves ​“at will” from 90 days to one year, making it easier to fire teachers in their first year on the job. Evaluations in most districts today yield simply a ​“satisfactory” or ​“unsatisfactory” rating; Malloy proposes expanding that to a four-tiered scale: ​“below standard,” ​“developing,” ​“proficient” and ​“exemplary.”

In the current system, teachers get tenure after four years; Malloy proposes allowing teachers to earn tenure in as few as 2 1/2 years if they earn two ​“exemplary” ratings. To get tenure, teachers would need at least three ​“proficient” or ​“exemplary” ratings in 50 school months. Teachers could be fired for demonstrating ​“ineffectiveness,” based on the evaluations. He also proposes reducing the number of arbiters at termination hearings from three to one.

Click here to read more details.

CEA and the American Federation of Teachers, the state’s other teachers union, have a tenure proposal of their own. They’re calling for a ​“fair dismissal act” that would shorten the timeline to remove ineffective teachers. Loftus-Levine said her union agrees with Malloy on certain parts of the tenure reform — including the reduction of three arbitrators to one during dismissal hearings.

Where they disagree, she said, is the subject of those hearings: Malloy proposes that the arbiter in those hearings could only review the process by which a teacher was fired, not the substance of the teacher’s evaluation.

CEA and AFT also agreed to a framework on revamped teacher evaluations that Malloy has said will be the basis of his reforms.

But Loftus-Levine she feels Malloy may be rushing the process. In order to overhaul the tenure system, she said, there needs to be a teacher evaluation system in place, which should be piloted by districts before being implemented statewide. Malloy’s plan calls for a heavy reliance of student test scores in deciding teachers’ fate. (Click here for a CT Mirror story on that. And click here for Christine Stuart’s report on superintendents of schools’ budget pleas at the Capitol Tuesday.)

“You have a sound evaluation system for any of this to work,” she said of the tenure reforms. ​“You don’t just have an idea and experiment with students’ lives.”

In Debut, Pryor Defends Teacher Reform

Earlier in the day, as New Haven’s hometown state schools chief endured a ​“coming-out party” before the Education Committee, a New Haven’s state representative asked him how his proposed tenure reforms would affect teachers already in the classroom.

Stefan Pryor, a former New Haven alderman and the new head of the state Department of Education, made his debut Tuesday before the committee. State Sen. Andrea Stillman of New London, who co-chairs the committee, called it a ​“coming-out party.”

His appearance came as the committee convened two days of hearings on Senate Bill 24. Teachers, students, union officials, charter proponents and education watchdog groups converged on the Capitol as the legislature began public hearings on Malloy’s school reform proposals.

Pryor arrived to the party at 1:10 p.m. with the governor. His aide, former New Haven mayoral staffer Emily Byrne, delivered him a straw and a large cup of soda before the big event.

He got the spotlight after the governor left. He began by attempting to clarify what he called misconceptions about the most controversial part of his education reform package — a quest to revamp the state tenure program so that it’s based on teacher evaluations, which in turn would be based on student performance.

“We do not aim to abolish tenure… instead we seek to reform it,” he reminded the panel. He said the reform package focuses on teacher effectiveness, not mere incompetence, as grounds for dismissal.

State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, one of two New Haven legislators on the committee that’s taking center stage this session, asked the first question of the commissioner. (He didn’t get to ask one of the governor, who was short on time.) Holder-Winfield showed up to the marathon event with a doughnut and a slice of pizza from the Capitol cafeteria.

Holder-Winfield asked Pryor how the tenure reforms would translate to the classroom.

“There is the perception that you can just kind of sit there and get tenure,” Holder-Winfield said. ​“I recognize you have to reform the tenure.” But under the governor’s proposal, ​“what makes the people who aren’t doing their job, do their job, in your bill?”

Pryor (pictured) said key to the new teacher evaluations is a system of support—as in New Haven, low-performing teachers would get extra professional development to help them in areas of weakness.

Tenured teachers who get one year of poor marks on a teacher evaluation wouldn’t be booted from the profession, Pryor assured the panel. Teachers who lose tenure as a result of poor grades could be bumped down to a non-tenured teaching certification, but ​“they would continue to be able to teach.”

Pryor also stressed that high-performing teachers could get tenure earlier if they get two ​“exemplary” evaluations. And he called for creating a masters certificate of teaching for teachers who excel in their trade.

Malloy has proposed ​“an array of talent interventions” that aim to improve teaching, Pryor added. That includes $1 million in new financial incentives to recruit top college students and $2 million for new ​“pipeline” programs to develop teachers into leaders. Another $5 million would go towards professional development for teachers, and $2.5 million would go towards developing a new teacher evaluation system, according to an accord reached between labor, administrators and school boards.

The goal, Pryor said, is to ​“create a system that works for all teachers,” not just those that are performing poorly.

Pryor’s welcome party was cut short because legislative rules require that public officials share speaking time with members of the public. Over 100 people signed up to speak to the committee Tuesday.

Tenure Dig Catches Up With Malloy

As Tuesday’s heated hearings began on his proposed teacher tenure reform, Gov. Malloy was hit with a question: Has he been telling the truth about how the system works now? Or is he vilifying teachers?

The question came Tuesday afternoon as Gov. Malloy made a half-hour appearance before the Education Committee.

As he opened the floor for questions Tuesday at 1:30 p.m., Malloy heard from state Rep. Andy Fleischmann of West Hartford, who co-chairs the committee, about the governor’s plans to reform tenure by tying it to teacher effectiveness, as measured by an overhauled teacher evaluation system based on student performance.

Before he could discuss his plans, Malloy had to play defense against what many see as his mischaracterization of the way the system is today.

“I heard from teachers in my district that the way you portrayed tenure didn’t accurately portray their experience,” Fleischmann told Malloy.

He was referring to comments Malloy made in his State of the State address. In order to earn tenure, Malloy said, ​“basically the only thing you have to do is show up for four years. Do that, and tenure is yours.”

The remarks met widespread criticism from teacher unions, who say ​“tenure” hardly means a guaranteed lifetime job the way it does in college; they say it means that teachers get some rights to defend themselves against accusations in the face of moves to dismiss them. Click here to read New Haven Federation of Teachers President Dave Cicarella’s detailed rebuttal describing the process. For the first four years, teachers can basically be dismissed without cause or due process.

Malloy Tuesday stuck to his remarks.

First, he told Fleischmann, ​“I have no doubt [the teachers] had a different experience than just showing up for four years.” However, he said, all schools have poor-performing teachers who shouldn’t be there: ​“It’s amazing how many people will admit there are teachers in buildings which they believe don’t belong there, but because of this system remain there.”

He said the basis of tenure needs to be ​“effectiveness” instead of mere competence. He urged the legislators to start the discussion in their hometowns about whether all teachers in the district belong there.

As the question-and-answer session continued, Malloy heard the same concern from two other legislators, who said teachers in their district had taken offense at Malloy’s remarks.

“I appreciate your listening,” Malloy said. ​“But again — legally — the description was apt. With a probationary period as short as the one that we require,” he argued, it’s easy for teachers to get tenure, and hard to get rid of them.

“Having said that,” Malloy added, ​“to the extent that anyone was offended, I certainly did not intend to offend.”