It’s been a rough few weeks for public education here in Connecticut.
When the state Education Department dumped the ‘funny math’ of previous regimes, it found high school graduation rates were actually much worse than originally reported, closer to 80 percent than the 90-plus the state had been touting.
When UConn budgeters took a look at the widening gap between the number of students and faculty members, it enacted a major fee increase. Then there was the third successive rebuff from the feds on the state’s application for Race for the Top funds and another round of statistics showing a gaping disparity in achievement scores. Stir in the recurring reverberations from cheating on standardized testing and, well, the picture is bleak heading into a legislative session where education is the central topic.
So it comes as welcome news that the state’s 41,000 unionized teachers, represented by the Connecticut Education Association, are willing to bend on tenure and on streamlining the disciplinary process to purge the system of under-performing teachers. Any flexibility in these areas has been hard to extract so any movement is welcome.
However, it’s clear we still have a long way to go before we can be confident we have a system that works.
Under the plan unveiled by the CEA, there would be more frequent and more standardized evaluation of teachers but less of a focus on measureable results. The time it takes to dismiss a failing teacher would come down from 120 to 85 days. And only one arbitrator would be needed, not three.
As much as we’d like to applaud progress in this arena, those half steps still leave us miles from where we need to be.
Sure, we all dislike the idea of ‘teaching to the test’ but some measurement of results is needed. If we leave teacher evaluations to the subjective methods of the existing system — the same one that has raised social promotion to a high art and foisted a massive remedial burden on the state’s college system — everybody will get the ‘I’m teacher of the month’ bumper sticker.
Similarly, while teachers need some protection from the political whims of school officials, these are not Supreme Court posts with lifetime tenure. Some system of renewable term contracts seems a plausible solution — perhaps a five-year contract for high-performing teachers; three years for fully functional teachers; one year of probationary employment accompanied by some remedial training for those who need to improve.
We hope this is one of the areas where the Malloy administration pushes back against the tidal wave of labor sentiment. It’s a tough task for Governor Malloy, since it was groups like the teachers union who handed him a narrow Election Day victory. Still, if we’ve come this far, it seems a shame to stop before we have a meaningful improvement.
From the perspective of business, it’s important that the school system does a better job of turning out workers who are ready for 21st-century careers. As futurist Ken Gronbach points out (Q&A, Page 8), the youth of Generation Y hold the future of the state’s economy in their hands. It would be a tragedy if the best they can aspire to is asking if we want fries with our fast-food order.
This is a rare moment when all the forces are focused on making substantive improvement. A labor-friendly governor is in a unique position to be heard when he says change is needed. Still, the road ahead will be bumpy as legislators and special interests wrestle over how much change is enough.
The governor’s statements so far have been encouraging. “We should not and will not accept half-measures and repackaged versions of the status quo,” he said recently.
We’re rooting for him to stand firm on this issue. Nothing short of the state’s economic future is at stake.
