OP-ED | Senate Bill 24: A Punishment Or An Opportunity For CT’s Teachers?
by Ramani Ayer | Apr 16, 2012 10:56pm
(20) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Opinion
Teachers across the state have been led to believe that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s education reform bill called for an unfair evaluation system — one in which they could be evaluated and arbitrarily dismissed by a single administrator, one which would fuel competition, rather than collaboration, and remove job security. In response to such fears, the Education Committee bowed under pressure and passed substitute language that significantly weakened the bill.
The disheartening irony is that if teachers really understood the governor’s original plan, they would welcome it as a long overdue opportunity to receive the support, financial compensation, and professional recognition that they don’t receive today.
The governor’s original bill addressed teachers’ concerns about being unfairly evaluated by a single administrator by actually making it more difficult for arbitrary dismissals to occur. It relied upon the evaluation framework developed by the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council, which requires a variety of factors to be included in teacher evaluations — including student learning indicators, observations of teacher performance, peer review, and student and parent input. This framework acknowledges the complicated nature of the teaching profession through multi-faceted evaluations that measure both subjective and objective data, so that no arbitrary opinion by one administrator could ever be solely responsible for a negative outcome to a teacher.
If teachers understood what was being proposed in the governor’s original bill, they would also recognize that it promoted excellence amongst educators by seeking to support and motivate teachers’ continued development, and by refraining from setting limits on how many teachers in a school or district may achieve the highest levels of success.
In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 61 percent of all union households agreed that public school teachers who do an outstanding job should be rewarded with additional pay. The governor’s original proposal made this a possibility, first by finding a way to identify outstanding teachers, and then by proposing a salary scale based upon effectiveness. Now, under the Education Committee’s language, the possibility of rewarding exemplary teachers with additional pay has been substantially weakened, to the detriment of teachers.
Further, teachers would have recognized that the Governor’s original bill sought to provide them with the highest caliber of colleagues by replacing an antiquated system of tenure, in which the award is based upon seat-time, with a new system that would require a demonstration of effectiveness in order to obtain and maintain tenure. The Education Committee’s language instead calls for basing tenure upon the number of school months a teacher has worked, rather than whether that teacher has done a good job. Under the Education Committee’s new language, teachers will lose the opportunity to wear tenure as a badge of professional honor, and to be sure of having coworkers who are equally committed to the profession and to their students.
The governor’s education reform bill, in its original form, presented a chance for Connecticut to celebrate its hard-working and effective teachers. It intended to evaluate teachers fairly — rather than simply labeling them either as competent or incompetent, as today’s system does. It sought to acknowledge teachers as individual professionals, so that those who were doing an exemplary job were recognized and rewarded, those who needed extra help to become effective were supported, and those who did not demonstrate effectiveness despite numerous supports were removed from the classroom. In short, the governor’s original education bill presented the opportunity that many teachers have been waiting for: a chance to be treated as professionals, to be rewarded for hard work, and to have coworkers who are equally committed to helping students learn.
Teachers who are dedicated to their crafts, who believe it is their responsibility to help students learn, and who deserve professional recognition and financial compensation for their hard work — these teachers owe it to themselves to tell their elected officials to reinstate these important policies to the education reform bill, which would benefit, not punish, teachers.
Ramani Ayer is vice-chair of the CT Council for Education Reform and retired chairman & CEO of The Hartford Insurance Company
Tags: education reform, Ramani Ayer, CCER, teachers, dh
(20) Comments
posted by: ConcernedVoter | April 17, 2012 8:46am
Please be aware of who this man is. Is he a teacher? Is he a principal? Is he a politician? No. He is a CEO and vice-chair of one of the original groups that tried to railroad a failing idea down the throats of teachers and parents. Come clean Mr.Ayers. You and you associates want to profit from education and the information that you provide above are the same old lies. These have been discussed since the bill came out. You worry about your failing business community, let the voters worry about education.
posted by: Linda12 | April 17, 2012 10:02am
Mr. Ayer:
I do not know you, but teachers do not need one more person telling us we do not understand SB 24.
We know all about the PEAC framework that is not complete. Has Commissioner Pryor responded to the CEA request to convene meeting? - Important Work Remains Undone - http://blogcea.org/2012/04/05/important-work-remains-undone/
Can you take the time to make a phone call and ask that question?
Whether you intend to or not, like the Governor and his aides, you insult us collectively as a group of morons. You see, unless ALL teachers agree with you, then we must not understand the bill.
We know what will happen with the “salary scale based upon effectiveness” - it WILL become a quota system laid out by the superintendent for each principal. Instead of working together collaboratively we will be competing for the same slivers of the pie. You can only have so many “distinguished” educators, which will fluctuate each year at budget time and believe me, it will not be based upon effectiveness. Have you ever worked for an extended period of time as a TEACHER in a public school system? Not two years as a Teach for Awhile, not a visit to sit in the back of the classroom, not a substitute stint in your college days….the real deal. I suspect not.
The push for testing and the tying of student results to teacher evaluations is only the beginning.
A recent quote by a NY high school principal in the Washington Post: “The culture of testing has created an enormous opportunity for profit for those connected with the testing and data industry as well as well-paid professional consultants. In the war on public schools, commonly referred to as ‘school reform,’ the weapon of choice is the test. Those tests are the basis for battering public school teachers. They are the basis for closing schools. They are the rock on which the whole corporate school reform industry stands. Without test scores as the bottom line, that industry would collapse.”
YOU STATE: Teachers who are dedicated to their crafts, who believe it is their responsibility to help students learn, and who deserve professional recognition and financial compensation for their hard work – these teachers owe it to themselves to tell their elected officials to reinstate these important policies to the education reform bill, which would benefit, not punish, teachers.
Therefore, anyone that doesn’t agree with you is NOT dedicated to their crafts, does NOT take seriously their responsibility to help students learn, does NOT deserve professional recognition and therefore, does NOT deserve financial compensation for their hard work.
Is that what you are saying?
If this is your message to get us all on board, so we will call our elected officials in support of the original bill, you have failed and you haven’t convinced me.
posted by: AMM | April 17, 2012 10:07am
Nothing like another person who has never worked in a classroom dictating educational policy. Can you start putting what reform organizations these authors belong to at the top of the article so we know right away whether this column is a sales ad devoid of objectivity and reality?
posted by: TerryW | April 17, 2012 10:27am
Hmmm? Do you think he is really appealing to the teachers or just trying to make them look bad?
They are circling the wagons for sure and they do appear desperate. I wonder why?
posted by: lutzfernandez | April 17, 2012 10:36am
Thank you, Mr. Ayer for what appears to be your sincere interest in improving education. When I left investment banking, I too wished to contribute to the lives of Connecticut students, and I did so by becoming a teacher. I am sure many of our goals are the same. However, what I, and many teachers across the state, understand is that the original SB24 would accomplish few of its stated goals and subvert many of them.
Your language suggests that you believe that teachers do not understand the bill, having been misled about its content. You should know that across the state teachers, individually, in impromptu study groups, and in meetings with parents have been working to read, analyze, and assess the bill. Why wouldn’t we when the bill will affet our livelihoods, the very nature of our jobs, and the future of the children we serve? In fact, in the first few weeks after it was introduced, our conversations with legislators suggested that we understood SB24 better than many of them. We have not relied on our union to preform our opinions for us, as your piece intimates. Teachers hold a variety of opinions on the bill, and we do not all agree with each part of the union’s response to it.
However, importantly, most teachers understand that the bill in its original form would further denigrate, not elevate, teaching as a profession. This is understood especially well, perhaps, by teachers like me, who have come from other professions, often taking pay cuts to teach. Efforts by businesspeople, many with little real understanding of what goes on in our schools and what should go on in our schools, to apply a business model to teaching fail to understand what motivates teachers.
To your point on PEAC, teachers on the whole do not object to an evaluation system such as you have described, although far superior systems already exist in many high-achieving districts in the state. They do object to linking such a system to salary, which is what the original bill did. You and I are accustomed to merit pay in the form of bonuses, Mr. Ayer. Original SB24 linked district evaluations to salary level—not bonus. Why would our top graduates or career changers enter a career that is from a financial perspective both low reward and high risk?
With respect to teacher development, I can tell you that just as in business, most of what I have learned about how to do my job well in teaching has come from working with my colleagues. Setting up incentives for teachers to compete rather than collaborate, which both versions of the bill do, will make it much harder for new teachers to develop and for veterans to continue to develop.
Advocates for a bill that relies on the presumption that what ails education is the people who deliver it would do well to spend more time understanding what draws and keeps the best teachers in teaching—and it isn’t a desire to operate in a more business-like setting. Gov. Malloy has said that good teachers need not worry—under the bill they’ll do fine. He misses the point. Good teachers do worry, that’s why we’re good.
posted by: Speak up | April 17, 2012 10:52am
Maybe you could donate your multi-million dollar bonus to the cause. Put your money where your mouth is sir rather than demeaning public servants who strive to support their families and send their kids to college while making $50,000 to $80,000. Your proposal is to wipe out the higher paid teachers and to keep a young, naive and easily manipulated workforce never exceeding $50,000. We know the true intentions of the bill.
Follow the money…it is all about the money.
posted by: TerryW | April 17, 2012 11:08am
A tip for Mr. Ayer,
Don’t send in an op-Ed piece during a school vacation week. The teachers have time to read, digest and respond. We do have critical reading and thinking skills, by the way.
posted by: CONconn | April 17, 2012 11:47am
Teachers who are unhappy with actions of these profit-minded business people during this crisis need to send a message with their wallets. We should not be supporting businesses that belong to CCER and continue to push this misinformation.
posted by: ConcernedTeacher2 | April 17, 2012 1:07pm
@Ramani Ayer,
Mr. Ayer, please don’t tell me what I do and don’t understand about my own profession. That alone proves your own ignorance on this topic. You have absolutely ZERO experience in the field of education and YOUR ignorance shows with your Op-Ed piece above.
If you actually stopped and thought rationally you would know that EXPERIENCE is the greatest teacher of all time. Regardless of the job there is always something to be said of experience. I’m pretty sure your position of CEO and chairman at The Hartford was not earned by just “showing up”. No, your time and efforts with the company were rewarded. Just as our time and efforts with our schools rewards us. Please don’t forget that the tenure we do in fact EARN (and you and many others misinterpret) only comes AFTER we have proven our worth for 4 CONSECUTIVE YEARS of multiple evaluations per year!
How often were you evaluated in your last position?
My parting words are actually a question, if we (teachers) have it SO easy and get so much to provide so little, why didn’t YOU become a teacher?
posted by: TerryW | April 17, 2012 4:03pm
This is getting ridiculous.
I suppose we need more advice. Let’s see we have ConnCan, CBIA, CCER, CABE, CASS…I know I left somebody off the list.
And now there is a new one: Connecticut Reform Advisory Panel, otherwise knows as CRAP.
Imagine if the teachers told them how to run their banks, insurance companies, etc..
When I am done teaching, I think I will dabble in banking as a second career.
posted by: Linda12 | April 17, 2012 4:50pm
One question:
If the corporate executives, politicians and agency leaders believe teachers are not capable of understanding SB 24 on their own (since evidently they need to write op-ed pieces to help us), then why do they believe the very same teachers are capable of educating the children in Connecticut?
posted by: anniemil | April 17, 2012 6:44pm
We’ve come a long way…or have we? I, as a retired teacher, find Mr. Ayer extremely patronizing, and quite frankly, insulting. As a business person, why would he be so interested in teachers endorsing the original SB24? The bottom line has GOT to be money and financial gain…for him and his cronies…the 1%. I’m not really sure how far teachers have come since my own mother had to resign her teaching position in 1936 because she married and just might become a mother and we know what that means. You lost your argument with me, Mr. Ayer. And, I’m positive my mother would agree!
posted by: Bronx | April 17, 2012 8:43pm
Perhaps Mr. Ayer should review how well the condescending tone of our “beloved” Governor Malloy has worked with teachers in Connecticut before he tries the same tact in his editorial…While this method might work in a board room as you send underlings scurrying, I assure you Mr. Ayer, not only am I well versed in the transparencies of Malloy’s money grab, I can explain in detail how this bill, if passed in its original form, will be a colossal failure. I, like so many others, don’t need you to tell me what I need to understand…Perhaps you are the one who is in need of understanding… Or perhaps you, like our Governor, like to report half-truths on the PEAC framework that isn’t close to being completed, and was never intended to be a link between evaluation and pay. Perhaps you should make yourself aware that tenure only gives a teacher the right of due process and is not a preventative to poor teachers getting terminated. Or perhaps you should simply tell us the truth…which is you, like so many of your philanthro-capitalist brethren, simply see this bill, which caters to private charter school companies, as a money making venture. Perhaps you aren’t aware, or don’t care about the educational ramifications it would have in this state. In truth, what the bill is attempting to do is build a business model in which teachers are arbitrarily dismissed before they can make a decent living with this ambiguous evaluation system… keep that overhead down right??? Not exactly the model to lure the best and brightest I assure you, and not exactly building a stable faculty for students when you have teachers that aren’t certified or even have education degrees.
Mr. Ayer there are many people who do care about children in this state. Far more than all your incestuous “reform” organizations with the same millionaires functioning on each board combined. We see right through you, and your cohorts’ various agendas. We don’t see students as dollar signs like you do. With the bill’s reworking it’s nice to see legislators don’t either…
posted by: RJEastHartford | April 17, 2012 9:10pm
This gentleman knows about profit, he just had a hard time earning profits as a corporate CEO. Under his leadership the Hartford more than underperformed it almost became insolvent. Many hard working people lost jobs as a result of his leadership. His compensation when all was said and done was in the millions. I am sure he told the former employees that they did not understand the “strategic positioning” of the company. This missive rings hollow. The story needs to be told on how these “reform” groups are trying to monetize education by taking it private.
posted by: mbracksieck | April 18, 2012 6:47am
To all of the concerned people who have posted their responses to Mr. Ayer’s ill-advised column: please consider joining a like-minded group of people who will be visiting the capitol on Tuesday & Wednesday of next week. We need to show our legislators that Ayer may have the money, but we have the votes. Help to send a message that teachers are informed and we stand united in support for public schools for all.
I would also like to invite Ayer to attend as well. It would be a great opportunity for him to demonstrate why he feels the original SB 24 is good for us. I know Malloy has not been able to articulate a cohesive and convincing argument, maybe a “successful businessman” would have more luck.
posted by: CONconn | April 18, 2012 10:11am
RJEastHartford, thank you for posting these important facts. I wonder if many of these other “reformers” were also failures in their original line of work.
posted by: Linda12 | April 18, 2012 10:27am
To Mbracksieck:
We will all be there…after school of course.
How do we get your invite to Mr. Ayer? Via CCER or his office?
posted by: DanEd | April 20, 2012 4:38pm
What have we learned here? Another individual who is disrespecting teachers who write entire articles stating teachers are not intelligent enough to understand what is best for them. We fully understand what is best for schools and children. Priority number 1, keeping education away from corporations and individuals who want to profit off bully legislation, that proports to be all about the students.
