Teacher Unions Win Adjustments In U.s. Education Grant Rules
The Obama administration wants public schools to tie teacher evaluations and pay to student performance, and unions have sought to ensure that test scores arent the sole measure. While student gains should still be a “significant factor,” educator evaluations should be designed with teacher and principal involvement, the Education Department said yesterday.
“The Department of Education worked hard to strike the right balance between what it takes to get system-wide improvement for schools and kids, and how to measure that improvement,” Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million- member American Federation of Teachers, said yesterday in an e- mailed statement.
The Education Department released a summary of the final rules in Washington. As proposed in July, states would be ineligible to apply for the “Race to the Top” grants if they bar the use of student-performance data in measuring teacher effectiveness.
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, signed a law Nov. 10 that allows the use of student-achievement data in teacher evaluations. The California State Senate voted last week to make a similar change.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has long pressed for merit-pay programs that reward teachers for gains in student performance, plans to announce the grant rules today. Teachers unions oppose linking pay to pupil test scores, saying they arent an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness.
“We are pleased the department heard our call for greater teacher involvement in evaluation systems,” Weingarten said.
Nationwide Standards
Among the other criteria for the stimulus grants are a commitment to developing common, nationwide academic standards; creating more “high quality” charter schools and turning around the lowest-performing schools, according to the summary.
The Education Department said it plans to disburse the competitive stimulus funds in two phases, awarding the first round of grants early next year and the second by September 2010. States that fail to win grants in the first phase may reapply for the second, the agency said.
The Education Department also sought to clarify that it doesnt view charter schools as the “chief remedy” for turning around chronically low-performing schools. Charter schools operate under contracts with school districts and are exempt from certain state and local regulations that govern traditional public schools.
Silver Bullet
The National Education Association, the biggest U.S. teachers union, told Duncan in an August letter that the July proposal appeared to promote charter schools as a “silver bullet, despite the fact that charters have often produced lower achievement gains than district-run public schools.”