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With voter approval of a three-year, $48.2 million operations levy for Seattle schools on the Nov. 2 general election ballot, the Seattle school district is poised to enact a new teachers' contract that links improvement in student learning to how teachers are evaluated. It also offers more help to teachers who are struggling or new to the classroom.
The Seattle school board approved the new three-year teachers' contract in September. The contract's total estimated cost over three years is $19 million; the district is relying on nearly $17 million from the voter-approved operations levy. Full funding for the contract hinges on whether the school district receives certain federal grants and state monies.
The contract "focuses on meeting kids' learning needs – and on the teamwork and ongoing development that focus requires," says Ramona Hattendorf, president of the district-wide Seattle Council Parent Teacher Student Association. "Using student data to inform goal setting, as well as professional development and intervention, will help ensure our students and teachers get the ongoing support they need."
Shortly after the Seattle Education Association's contract vote in September, members voted "no confidence" in Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. Among the 4,700-member union's concerns over the superintendent's leadership are the addition of new tests for students and a state audit that found several problems with the district's financial oversight.
Under the old contract, Seattle required principals to evaluate teachers each year and rate them as "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory." Teachers had to be rated "satisfactory" on seven of eight categories – such as instructional skill or classroom management – none of which directly referenced student learning or required standardized measures of student learning.
Under the current contract, a new system would be phased in over three years. This school year, much work would focus on how to fairly use standardized testing to measure student academic growth and foster improved teaching, as well as how to incorporate student data, such as poverty, in evaluating teacher performance.
Teachers will be evaluated on a four-level scale – "unsatisfactory," "basic," "proficient" and "innovative" – in the areas of classroom environment, planning and preparation, instruction and professional responsibility. Teachers will be expected to work with their principal to set measurable goals for students' academic growth, using state and district tests, as well as classroom-based tools (such as a student portfolio of work). Low-rated teachers would receive additional help and monitoring; teachers who fail to progress could be placed on probation and eventually let go.
The contract gives teachers 1 percent raises in 2011-12 and 2012-13. It gives them more collaborative planning time, sets aside more money for mentors to help instructors new to the classroom and adds other leadership positions for teachers. The contract also calls for paying extra money to teachers who work in the lowest performing schools and meet certain performance expectations. The district's strongest performing teachers could earn stipends of $2,500 to $5,200 a year for sharing their expertise with other teachers.
Last spring, Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into law a series of education reforms to revamp select education laws, including those around teacher evaluation and teacher tenure, in a bid to compete for up to $250 million in federal education stimulus dollars over four years. But in July of this year, Washington state lost that bid for a piece of the $4 billion federal education stimulus program known as Race to the Top, which calls for recruiting, developing, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals as well as building data systems that measure student growth and success and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction.
The state may get another chance to compete for those federal dollars; the Obama administration has requested $1.35 billion for Race to the Top in its fiscal year 2011 budget proposal to fund a potential phase three of the competitive grant program.
Lynn Schnaiberg is a Seattle-based writer and former reporter for the national Education Week newspaper in Washington, D.C.
