Washington Education Association members were out in force Thursday lobbying against teacher-evaluation measures.
OLYMPIA, March 7.—As the 2014 Legislature enters its waning days, the lobbying over a teacher-evaluation bill is becoming intense – and it is beginning to look ever-so-much like a showdown between the Democratic governor and the generous teacher’s union that did so much to elect him in 2012.
Gov. Jay Inslee Thursday renewed his call for the Legislature to pass a bill that makes a simple fix to state law – without it he warns that the state’s school districts otherwise will lose control over some $40 million in federal funds. But the Washington Education Association is of a different mind. Suddenly a rather delightful question is being weighed by lawmakers: Which one has more influence? House Democrats right now seem to have trouble making up their minds.
As Gov. Inslee was telling reporters Thursday that the Legislature needs to pass the bill pronto, lest the state lose a “waiver” under federal law that allows districts to spend Federal Title 1 funds as they see fit, some 300 teachers were staging a rally on the lawn between the House and Senate office buildings. It was a visual demonstration of the campaign the Washington Education Association has been waging in recent days to defeat the measure, which would require standardized tests to be used in teacher evaluations. The big-spending labor union appears to be making the vote a litmus-test issue for candidates who are up for election this fall, and it may presage an effort next year against accountability measures that rely on standardized testing.
Not only have teachers been swamping legislators with emails and buttonholing them in hallways, they are saying Inslee ought to think twice if he wants to be a two-term governor. “We’re kind of disappointed in some of the things he’s doing right now,” said Sally Mafinisky, a second-grade teacher in the South Kitsap School District. “I went out many hours in many rainstorms to help him get elected. And WEA did a lot for him. He needs to support us.”
It is the kind of thought that makes good Democrats gulp. No wonder the bill is in trouble.
A Black and White Matter
Gov. Jay Inslee says there’s no doubt about it — lawmakers have to pass a bill or the state’s school districts will control over $40 million in federal funding.
At a news conference Thursday Inslee told reporters there is no question whatever – if the state doesn’t make the change, the U.S. Department of Education is going to yank the state’s waiver. The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to use federally mandated standardized tests in judging teacher performance. But until this point, Washington and other states have been able to get by without it – this state is rolling out a teacher-and-principal evaluation program by the 2017-18 school year, but it is one that does not mandate the use of standardized tests. The feds say time is up. Washington and seven other states have been put on warning: No more delays.
What the feds are after is a relatively simple change to state law. Right now school districts are required to consider measures of “student growth” in performance evaluations. And if they choose, they can use the results of standardized student testing. The feds say they have to use it.
And what happens if lawmakers don’t change the law? Some 20 percent of federal Title 1 money school districts receive will be sequestered – meaning districts will lose control of millions of dollars they currently use to hire teachers and provide programs for minority and at-risk youth. Instead that money is supposed to be used to allow parents to send children to tutoring programs and to non-failing schools. The thing is, under federal definitions, every school in the state is failing, save one elementary school in the Edmonds School District. Worse, virtually every parent of a school-age child in Washington will receive a letter declaring that the local school is failing – a black eye that won’t help much when it comes time to pass local levies.
Said Inslee, “We are going to go backwards if we lose that $40 million flexibility, and there are other things that are going to be unfortunate – letters going out to thousands of parents telling them their school is failing, when in fact that is not the case. So my view is it is in order to try bring these parties together to get a solution to this problem.”
In case anyone had any doubts about it, Inslee’s office released a letter from federal education secretary Arne Duncan. Without saying it directly, Duncan said that if the state requires standardized tests to be used by 2017-2018, the state ought to be able to keep its waiver. It goes on: “I am encouraged to see that you are taking proactive steps to avoid jeopardizing your waiver, which ultimately could lead to the state returning to the requirements of NCLB and your school districts losing flexibility to manage more than $40 million in federal funding to improve educational outcomes for students across Washington.”
Minor Difference Between Ds and Rs
Senate Early Learning and K-12 Chairman Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island.
Inslee and state schools Superintendent Randy Dorn, both Democrats, have authored a measure, House Bill 2800, that would make the simple change the feds require. House Republicans and the largely-Republican Majority Coalition Caucus in the Senate have a beef with it. The bill says the law is null and void if the feds don’t extend the waiver. The Senate has a competing proposal with no null-and-void clause, Senate Bill 5880.
That argument is a matter of principle: There has been many a piece of legislation on which the Republicans would have liked to have a null-and-void clause as well — like the bills that enacted insurance reforms required by the federal Affordable Care Act. “Nobody seems to be very interested in that,” says Senate Early Learning and K-12 chair Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island. Inslee says he’s pushing the null-and-void clause mainly because it might make the bill easier for his team to swallow.
But the real beef is between the teachers and everyone else. The Rs don’t seem to have much trouble saying no to the teachers’ union. It’s not so much because of politics — though the fact that they generally do not get WEA contributions enables them to have some distance. For years they have been calling for greater measures of accountability, standardized testing among them, concerned not only about teacher performance but about high dropout rates among minorities and the disadvantaged. Litzow says WEA hasn’t bothered lobbying him lately, unless you count the “Tell Steve Litzow!” petition that appears on the union’s website.
But for Democrats who have benefited from the union’s largesse and its ready supply of ground troops at campaign season, it is a rather more difficult sort of choice. Not even Inslee dares say that accountability measures based on standardized tests are a good idea. He side-stepped a question on that point Thursday, saying merely that he is pushing the bill because the feds say the state has to pass it. “It is a policy based on real-world need for flexibility for those dollars, and I do not have the luxury, unlike pundits, to opine about situations that don’t exist.”
House Ds are Key
Indeed, you don’t find many who are eager to answer that question on the Democratic side of the aisle – or even express an opinion about the bill itself. House Education Chair Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle, demurs when asked if she supports the Inslee bill. “I think that the question really is whether or not we have the votes, and I don’t have the answer for that,” she said.
The key decision belongs to Santos’ caucus, the Democratic majority that controls the House. Santos says there was “robust discussion” about the Inslee bill during a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday. “I think the federal government has clearly got us between a rock and a hard place, and I think that is most unfortunate because we have a very, very rigorous and robust teacher and principal evaluation program that does include elements of student growth, which is what the federal government is requiring, so my feeling is that our state is treated very unfairly by the federal government.”
Over on the Senate side, a teacher-evaluation bill was voted down unexpectedly Feb. 18 when a handful of Republicans voted with Democrats against the measure. Litzow says there should be no problem on the second go-round. Since Feb. 18 the Department of Education has made its position crystal clear.
Teachers in Revolt
State Rep. Cathy Dahlquist, R-Enumclaw, the House Republican education lead.
Out on the grassy lawn, the teachers said they were ready to fight. Whatever the feds say, standardized tests are the wrong way to evaluate teachers, they maintain. Bad scores may not be their fault. “There are so many variables with children,” said South Kitsap teacher Ann Giantvalley. “We cannot control whether a kid is in school to learn. We have some kids with 30 percent absences and we can’t guarantee whether those children have got a good night’s sleep. We can’t guarantee that they have been in our classroom all year. If we could guarantee that students are in school 95 percent of the time and have 95 percent of their schoolwork done, 95 percent of their homework done, have healthy meals, have the spiritual counseling they need as well as parental counseling – please, let’s consider test scores.”
Said Jeff Morgan, a social-studies teacher from Ingraham High School in Seattle, “I should not be held responsible for tests that are not statistically reliable.”
Teachers maintain that the usage of standardized tests ought to be bargained at the local level when contracts are reached between school districts and unions. But the call for local control can be read another way: If they fight district-by-district, they have a better chance of winning. All would depend on how willing each individual school district is willing to carry on the fight. In this state there are 295 potential battlegrounds. Teachers just don’t get it, says state Rep. Cathy Dahlquist, R-Enumclaw, the House Republican education lead. The feds have made it clear their position is no longer acceptable. And if the federal money is yanked, their jobs are on the line. “Once that money is lost, it will actually take teacher jobs away,” she said.
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