This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Politics & Government

Two Bills Seek To Close Achievement Gap

Teacher Certification And Evaluations Under Consideration

A pair of proposed bills seeks to help fill the state’s education achievement gap. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Connecticut has the largest disparity nationwide between low-income and non-low-income students. 

In a 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress study of  fourth-grade and eighth-grade math and reading students, non-low income students outperformed low-income students by 34 points in math and 28 points in reading. 

Find out what's happening in Montvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Since the General Assembly opened Jan. 5, two proposed bills are taking aim the problem. SB 1104 would change state law to require all charter school teachers to be certified. And SB 1160 seeks teacher evaluations. 

If SB 1104 passes, the Commissioner of Education could waive the certification requirement for charter school teachers who demonstrate their effectiveness. 

Find out what's happening in Montvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The bill proposes to make 15 percent of those teachers eligible for waivers if they prove results, said state Rep. Gail Lavielle, R-143rd House District, a member of the Education Committee. Their incentive to get certified could be part of teacher pension plans. 

“It may be the most important bill because it actually acknowledges the importance of teacher accountability in regard to student outcomes. This bill is pivotal,” Lavielle said. 

Dacia Toll is president of Achievement First, which supports four public charter schools in New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport, supports the bill. 

“This bill in no way lowers the standards for educators in Connecticut – in fact, in a powerful way, it actually raises the standard to what we know our students need and deserve – it provides them with an effective teacher, not simply a teacher who has put in the required seat time in school of education courses,” Toll said in recent testimony. 

State Rep. Tom Reynolds, D-42nd, and a member of the Education Committee, said the bill is not meant to abolish standards but is meant to “strike a balance if their effectiveness can be demonstrated. It was an attempt to encourage certification.” 

The Connecticut Education Association, which represents 40,000 educators, opposes the bill. 

“The one absolute we all support is having higher qualified and properly certified teachers in our classrooms,” said Mary Loftus Levine, CEA’s Director of Policy and Professional Practice. “As educators, we oppose waiving the requirements that S.B. No. 1106 attempts to accomplish. Charter schools were granted lower standards, waiver language, and new alternate routes to certification, which just took effect July 1. When and where does this end?” 

“We won’t hire a teacher who’s not certified in the area that they teach,” said David Howes, a social studies teacher and director of Academics at Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication (ISAAC), a charter school in New London. “We follow the laws in the state for public school.” 

Howes said that charter schools in general face the problem of not being held up to the same standards as the public schools and having 100 percent of its staff alleviates that skepticism. 

“It’s absolutely the right way to go, it’s critical that the public school see charter schools on the same playing field, he said. “I want to be on the same playing field.” 

That’s where Results-Based Accounting, RAB, comes in. It was applied to Early Reading Success in 2008. The program showed little improvement and so legislators voted to stop funding it. 

“Much focus has been on what do you want teachers doing? Who do you want in the classroom?” Lavielle said. “You want teachers whose students learn the most.” 

To that end SB 1160 proposed a model for teacher evaluations. Any teachers needing improvement would get support and training to improve. Currently the state has no such system. 

The American Federation of Teachers supports it but CEA doesn’t. AFT says they have a model but it doesn’t work. CEA is worried that teachers need more protection. 

The model would set criteria for evaluations and seniority would no longer be the primary criteria for keeping someone on staff. 

Nicholas Fischer, superintendent of schools in New London, established a teacher evaluation model in that district years ago. 

“We considered state standards, national standards,” Fischer said, “The key notion that we built into our plan was that you had to be able to describe what effective teaching looked like in the classroom. The teacher and the administration need to be speaking the same language about what effective teaching looks like.” 

Tenure has, in some ways, quashed the ability for that evaluation dialogue, Lavielle said. Indeed Florida recently passed a bill eliminating tenure. 

“I frankly think that a teacher evaluation instrument needs to be a no excuse instrument,” said Fischer.

“This is not about jeopardizing good teachers,” Lavielle said. “But who are we trying to help here? The students. These people are closing the achievement gap every day.”

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?