Education Reform Passes Senate Early Tuesday Morning
by Christine Stuart | May 8, 2012 3:51am
(11) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Education
The 185-page education reform bill was praised by Democratic Senators and panned by Republicans, who didn’t have any time to read the bill before debate began shortly before 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.
The bill, which was negotiated for the better part of the past month by lawmakers and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s staff, passed the Senate 28-7 at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. Many of the Republicans voiced their displeasure with the process, but ended up voting for the legislation.
“This is vampire legislation,” Sen. Joseph Markley, R-Southington, said. “A bill emerges out of a backroom after midnight and it passes through the Senate before dawn and the debate never sees the light of day.”
Markley said he decided he wasn’t going to support the bill because once he saw it, he wasn’t going to have time to read it or understand it.
Republicans suggested they be given time to go back and talk to their constituents about the contents of the bill, but after protests about the process more than half the Republicans voted for the measure.
Markley said they won’t do that because “it’s a house of cards and it will fall over with the first small breeze that hits it.”
At a 10 p.m. press conference, Malloy admitted that people have been negotiating for a long time, especially during the last few days, “so there’s a chance we missed something.”
But with Sen. Steven Cassano, D-Manchester, said lawmakers need to trust their leaders who negotiated the bill. He said it’s difficult not to be part of the process, but that’s just the way the building works.
“The system of public education will continue to be the major way children will learn in Connecticut,” Cassano said in a statement. “Charter and magnet schools will continue to function with additional funding, but draconian changes proposed over the last few months will not happen.”
Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven, praised the bill for addressing the achievement gap once and for all.
She said there were versions of this bill that would have had the General Assembly take one percent of the dollars and “pretty much privatize” education and forget about the other 99 percent of children who attend public schools.
“What this bill does is say ‘we’re going to think about everyone, and we’re going to face the fact that we live in a knowledge-based economy,’” Harp said.
Two of the most difficult issues for lawmakers were in figuring out where charter schools fit into the state’s education picture and how teacher tenure is handled under a newly developed evaluation system.
Charter school funding was boosted in the bill passed by the Senate on Tuesday morning, but it wasn’t funded to the extent that Malloy had requested. Funding for charter schools was increased from $9,400 to $10,500 in the first year, $11,000 in the second, and $11,500 in the third. It also allows nonprofits to operate six of the 25 schools identified as turnaround schools, in effect prohibiting for-profit companies from doing so.
As far as teacher tenure goes, Sen. Andrea Stillman, co-chair of the Education Committee, said a teacher after four years of good evaluations should be granted tenure in their fifth year.
“Tenure, as you know, is due process,” Stillman said. “If a teacher has tenure and their evaluations fall off then the administrator can step in and help mentor that teacher.”
If that teacher doesn’t improve, then a termination process can begin, Stillman said.
“What we’ve done in this bill is shorten that length of time,” she added. The bill also calls for the new evaluation system developed by the Performance Evaluation and Advisory Council to be piloted in 10 schools.
The bill allows for teacher unions to use impact bargaining to negotiate working condition changes in the low-performing schools, which become part of the Education Commissioner’s network.
Sen. Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said he has to admit he hasn’t read every word of the legislation and isn’t happy with the process, but he praised the inclusion of a reading proficiency measure initially proposed by Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield of New Haven.
The bill includes a pilot program to enhance literacy for kindergarten through third grade students. It also creates 1,000 new preschool slots, mostly for low-income communities.
Click here to read more about the press conference announcing the education compromise.
Tags: education, senate, Joseph Markley, teacher, charter, Andrea Stillman, dh
(11) Comments
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | May 8, 2012 6:30am
What was Markley thinking? Voting against legislation because you didn’t have time to read it? What are you man? Literate?
Democrats handle this stuff so much better with the red, yellow and green flashcards on the floor.
Why distrust the Democratic leadership?
As it stands now:
CT Race to the Top Federal Funding?: Zero dollars.
CT No Child Left Behind standards? Non-compliant.
The Don Williams proposal? Lacks good faith as an honest attempt to become compliant.
Projected outcome: AG Jepsen is asked to resurrect the lawsuit in the Unions last ditch attempt to avoid accountability
No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The waiver will be denied as this legislation is a bad faith attempt to address previous shortfalls.
Will the Democrats file another lawsuit or resurrect the past one when they enter the penalty phase of NCLB next year?
http://tinyurl.com/ct3on83
Then there’s the next phase of Sheff non-compliance in 2012.
Will the Courts and Federal Government take over CT schools to resolve the achievement gap?
posted by: THREEFIFTHS | May 8, 2012 8:36am
I must ask this question.If you take away the teachers Tenure and get rid of the Bad Teachers, Bring in standardized testing. Longer school days and Charter Schools.And the students still have Educational Achievement Gaps who do we then blame if the students are still failing?
posted by: Edward Munster | May 8, 2012 9:06am
Prinicple: If you are not willing to use your real name and stand behind what you write then it is my belief that your comment is not worth writing or reading.
This education ‘reform’ bill is another example of rewarding incompetence. We spend more on poor performing schools. We have been doing this for years with little to show. Allow parents to choose their school of choice and include in the choices non-government schools. Give some level of voucher to assist these parents to be able to make such a choice. The system will learn quickly to reform itself when students and parents have choice.
posted by: DrHunterSThompson | May 8, 2012 11:25am
If we could fine legislators and the governor for bad legislation we woul have a large budget surplus.
The reform debate has been all wrong from the beginning. Nothing we can do now except vote put of office anyone that supported this.
HST
posted by: Matt W. | May 8, 2012 1:28pm
Not that this is limited to the bill in question but:
“Sen. Steven Cassano, D-Manchester, said lawmakers need to trust their leaders who negotiated the bill. He said it’s difficult not to be part of the process, but that’s just the way the building works.”
How is this a republican form of government? How does a constituent in Manchester affect the political process when his representative is held in the dark until the last minute and then told how to vote on a piece of legislation without reading it? How is Sen Cassano “representing” his constituents when he has no idea what he’s voting on?
Everyone assumes that the problem is that we’ve made poor choices in electing our representatives and that the solution is to “vote the bums out” but clearly the system is rigged to insulate itself from such a solution and from the election process in general b/c those who can be voted out have no ability to affect the outcome. Talk about a broken system. Everyone likes to talk about “how it really works” in Hartford like it’s some kind of inside knowledge that only the priveliged are privy to. They protect it b/c they are in the club. I think the whole thing stinks. Then again, what I think doesn’t matter. I don’t live in Meriden.
posted by: ctperson13 | May 8, 2012 3:19pm
Matt W.—Thank you for picking up on that ridiculous comment by Sen. Cassano. We just need to trust our leaders? Yeah—I don’t think so. Your job, Sen. Cassano, is to make certain that you are representing the wants and needs of your CONSTITUENTS, not to be a good little legislator and obey your “leaders.” Have you all forgotten how a Republic/democracy is supposed to work? If that’s “the way the building works” I suggest you get to work and CHANGE it!
posted by: Noteworthy | May 8, 2012 4:26pm
Note to Cassano:
Your comment is precisely why voters should throw you out of office. Nobody had a chance to read the bill and frankly, I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickle for most of those who call themselves leaders. They are a disgrace to meet in private, hide the discussions and the elements of the bill all the while hatching a plan to give tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers to Malloy’s charter chums with no competitive bidding. That any Demo would vote for this bill in the dead of night without reading it is disgraceful. Trust? There is not a group of people less trustworthy than the legislative leaders in Hartford. Maybe bankers. That’s it.
posted by: Linda12 | May 8, 2012 4:37pm
Who will monitor Pryor to make sure he actually follows the law? Will he continue to use SERC to hide secret payments or deals with charter friends, consultants, etc…. Where are the checks and balances to monitor the Lawyer/commissioner?
Do you trust him?
posted by: Linda12 | May 8, 2012 4:52pm
Sorry…one more….
The depressing part is this will lead to more teaching to the test (which is fine by Dannel) and more Hopeville’s (pressure from unethical adminstrators to do anything to raise the scores).
The only measurement to determine failing or not failing will be the high stakes test and that alone. Sometimes a school is noted as failing, but what is rarely explained is that it is one subgroup. So a majority of the kids can be proficient or higher and the spec. ed subgroup is below in one area (maybe just math or reading) and then the entire school is listed as failing.
And if special ed. could pass their grade level test (proficient, mastery or advanced) they wouldn’t be sped, would they? Or they should be declassified.
Also under NCLB, you only had to report your sped. results and be counted if you had 40 or more. So if you had less than 40 and they all flunked it wasn’t held against you as not passing.
No one ever explains what “failing” means and what subgroup failed and what exactly did they fail. Also, did those individual students progress in that subject area? Maybe a student was at below basic in 4th grade, but moved to basic. He or she is moving up but still considered failing.
We also do not compare the students to themselves the year before (but teachers do when they get new students each year). The papers print scores comparing one 7th grade class against the previous year’s 7th grade class when they should be comparing the kids to themselves the year before.
So we will spend more time on test prep, test practice, test taking, testing the next test. Little time for the real work: creative writing, free choice reading, developing of a love of literature, computer based projects, independent studies, long term projects, debates, science labs, etc….
We are breeding a nation of test takers who will be prepared to work for Pearson and grade future test takers.
I am a public school teacher. My children attended and graduated from public schools and they have done very well. HOWEVER, if I had younger children, I would spend all my money on a school that didn’t measure my child’s intelligence and growth by a high stakes test. I would be investigating private schools now for next year.
posted by: realist always | May 9, 2012 2:16am
we the citizens of ct. must enact a recall law to be able to terminate inept legislators,inept bullying disrespectfull pathalogical lieing governor malloy. all bully malloy has to do is SHOW UP and he can continue his underachiving out right failing leadership. we the citizens of ct. deserve to have a leader that is compitant, respectfull and has integrity and cerdibility.our current gov. lacks all the above credentials and it is everybodys responsibilty to have reform to terminate him.