Column: Tom Dooher, Guest Column

The president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce was absolutely right when he recently wrote that a highly trained and well-educated workforce was vital to Minnesota’s future, but two related bills moving through the Legislature that take aim at the job security of experienced teachers won’t bring us closer to that goal.

Instead, the bills sponsored by Rep. Branden Petersen, R-Andover, and Sen. Pam Wolf, R-Spring Lake Park, and recently endorsed by chamber President David Olson, tangle up two very different subjects, evaluating teachers and managing layoffs.

But first, let’s be clear about what this bill won’t do. It won’t reverse the inflation-adjusted 13 percent drop in per-pupil funding from the state since 2003. It won’t shrink overcrowded classrooms or replace outdated textbooks. It won’t repay a dime of the billions owed by the state government to schools.

These are the education issues Minnesotans actually worry about. MinnCAN, a high-profile supporter of the current legislation, has released a poll showing that Minnesotans overwhelmingly believe the most important challenge facing our public schools is budget cuts.

Only 4 percent of Minnesotans said teacher effectiveness was the top issue, and that’s on a poll with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

There’s no groundswell of support for these bills. That same MinnCAN poll found that 81 percent of Minnesotans give their local teachers a “good” or “excellent” rating. That’s not surprising. Minnesotans are justifiably proud of their schools. The state’s graduation rates and ACT scores are among the highest in the nation.

Nonetheless, the anti-seniority bills has become this session’s most discussed education issue. The supporters of the bills claim current state law requires that a teacher’s seniority be the lone deciding factor in layoffs. It doesn’t. For decades, school districts and teachers have had flexibility to negotiate a layoff process that’s best for their local students.

Many districts have done so. A new review of the teacher contracts of the largest 35 districts in the state by Education Minnesota found that 20 of them, with more than 280,000 students, have crafted their own processes.

It’s only when districts don’t reach a local agreement that they use the seniority system — an objective process that recognizes the value of experience. Research has shown that students tend to be more successful when they have seasoned teachers.

The bill would remove any incentive for school districts to negotiate local solutions by creating a very different default process — a teacher rating structure that will vary from district-to-district and may be based on no more than one year’s test scores.

The rating system may not mesh with the teacher evaluation framework passed by the Legislature last year. Educators at the state and local levels are now hashing out the details, including the requirement that 35 percent of the evaluation be based on test scores. It’s a complicated rule for educators in subjects without standardized tests, like guidance counselors.

Olson connects the bills to the state’s wide achievement gap between students from different racial and socioeconomic groups. He’s right that the gap is a serious issue, but it needs serious solutions. It just doesn’t make sense to claim that more budget cuts and teacher layoffs, regardless of the process, will help Minnesota schools lift up whole groups of students. Our lawmakers should be debating more reasonable solutions, like expanding early childhood education, reducing class sizes and providing students with the sort of wrap-around services they need to thrive — such as glasses for kids who can’t see the front of the room.

So we’re left with a proposal that isn’t a priority for the public, fails to recognize the flexibility already in law and won’t budge the achievement gap. So what’s the rush?

For one thing, it’s an easy distraction from the real issues facing our schools. It will also make it much simpler for administrators to shed seasoned professionals for their less-experienced, less-expensive colleagues. This proposal is about budget cutting, not student learning, and shouldn’t become law.

 

Tom Dooher is the president of Education Minnesota.