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State must act quickly to get stimulus money

Monica Hart-Nolan Comment: I've been teaching in public elementary school for nearly 25 years and was unaware that California banned linking test scores to teacher performance until Arne Duncan bribed states to change their laws. I do know that not all children arrive at school equally prepared to succeed. For many, literacy comes as naturally as breathing. For others, it is a struggle to remember letters and sounds every single day. The successful readers have had access to books since their infancy. The struggling readers generally have not. This is one simple factor beyond my control that has astonishing impact on school performance and on my effectiveness. Add to that the many other social and family factors that influence learning and it is so easy to imagine many better evaluations of a teacher’s performance and commitment than standardized tests.


Editorial

Now is not the time for the state of California to turn away extra money for its struggling school system. But if Sacramento doesn't act quickly, the state might be doing just that.

Earlier this month, Education Secretary Arne Duncan released guidelines for states to apply for $4.35 billion worth of competitive grants in education stimulus dollars.

Duncan has suggested that California could be disqualified from applying for that money - based on a 2006 law that pleased the teachers' union but has proven controversial ever since.

The California law says that the state cannot link student test scores to teacher performance data "for the purposes of pay, promotion, sanction or personnel evaluation."

It's hard to imagine what better evaluation there is of teachers' performance than student test scores. But putting aside that elephant in the room, the state doesn't make hiring or firing decisions. So why is this law on the books, anyway?

Apparently teachers wanted this law on the books as insurance against the state using the information in the future. Advocates have said it's a matter of insuring that personnel decisions are made at the "local level."

Duncan is not interested. His guidelines say that any state wishing to compete for the stimulus money cannot have any laws that prevent the use of student achievement data for teacher evaluations.

Now Sacramento is scrambling, trying to figure out if there's some legal loophole it can use to apply for the funds without getting rid of the law.

We say that it's time for this law to go. What has it accomplished, beyond possibly disqualifying California from desperately needed education money?

State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, is set to ask that question. Romero, who is chair of the Senate Education Committee, has called for a hearing on the law later this month.

"It's been an issue that's been in discussion for some time in Sacramento," Romero said. "But I think it brings it to the front now that stimulus dollars are at stake, so it's incumbent on us to do what we need to do to get that money for our students."

She's right. And if that means striking out a law that has no business being on the books anyway, then that's what Sacramento must do.



— Editorial
San Francisco Chronicle
2009-08-11
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/11/ED0Q196JUK.DTL

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