2010 COMMENTARY

April 27, 2010

Making Sense of Washington's Attempt to Race to the Top

By Diana Cieslak

Washington policymakers have been scrambling ever since President Obama announced his “Race to the Top” education grant competition. The minimum eligibility standards were far too high for Washington state. In an attempt to fix this, the Legislature this year passed SB 6696.
 
Compared to the backbends other states have done to qualify for Race to the Top, Washington barely touched its toes. It is highly unlikely we will win any grant money, so the real question is, will Washington win any good reforms because of SB 6696?

Below are descriptions of three issues the bill addresses. The first two could produce good reform, but don’t have to. The third is clearly not in the best interests of Washington’s schools.
 
Accountability
Washington is desperate for increased public school accountability. Currently, more than a quarter of all public high school students fail to graduate on time. SB 6696 seeks to hold schools accountable by intervening in failing schools, demanding reforms, then measuring the school’s success.

SB 6696 creates mandatory accountability procedures for the bottom five percent of persistently low-achieving schools. These schools will have a third-party academic audit and be required to write and implement a “required action plan”—subject to approval from the State Board of Education. Required action plans will be based on one of four federal models: turnaround, restart, closure, or transformation.
 
The bill includes the power to reopen collective bargaining agreements, removing a historic roadblock to reform.
 
But it makes compromises, too.
 
SB 6696 forbids the creation of charter schools from the action plan. While the rest of the country is moving toward instituting more flexibility—especially in failing schools that need radical overhaul—Washington is staying put.
 
Moreover, it creates a working group that will take the next three years to consider what to do when a school doesn’t improve after implementing its action plan. Legislators could answer this question today if they had the courage. Instead, a working group will discuss it; in three years they might decide the next step is to create a taskforce.
 
Evaluations
The second area of reform is in teacher and principal evaluations. According to a 2009 study by the National Council on Teacher Quality, of the roughly 3,300 teachers in the Seattle Public School District only 16 received unsatisfactory ratings last year.
 
SB 6696 requires schools to establish a four-level rating system for teachers and principals. It also requires districts to give their criteria to the public.
This has the potential to improve the efficacy of teacher and principal evaluations. Mandatory criteria offer a good starting point for districts.
 
But again, the bill makes substantial compromises. It leaves out the most important indicator of effective teaching:  whether students actually learn.
 
Additionally, it gives unions veto power. To establish a model evaluation procedure, State Superintendent Randy Dorn must meet with “associations” of teachers, administrators, and parents. A few districts will be selected to pilot the new programs, pending “the agreement of the local associations representing classroom teachers and principals to collaborate.”
 
Requiring union approval instantly reduces the likelihood of producing results-based criteria.
 
Finally, the bill doesn’t change what happens when a teacher fails to improve. Rather than being dismissed from employment, the unsatisfactory educator is “placed into an alternative assignment for the remainder of the school year.” If that’s not possible, “the district may … place the employee on paid leave for the balance of the contract term.” So the bad teacher is sent to another classroom. Or paid not to work.
 
Common Core Standards
Common Core Standards are decisively bad for Washington—and the country.
 
SB 6696 directs Superintendent Dorn to revise Washington’s Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR’s) and “provisionally” replace them with a set of common standards developed by a “multistate consortium in which Washington participated.”
 
This is a blatant move toward nationalizing education standards. States are voluntarily giving away their right to establish their own definition of what constitutes a good education—a right historically far beyond the federal government’s reach.
 
What now?
Depending on how they implement it, legislators could put teeth into SB 6696 and make it a starting point for the reforms we need—school choice, deregulation, local control, connecting teacher effectiveness to student learning. But as it now stands, the bill is all carrots, no sticks.
 
That being the case, I’ve unfortunately concluded that SB 6696 will not improve Washington’s public schools. That’s not to say it couldn’t, though—and I dare our policymakers to prove me wrong.

Contact: Diana Cieslak

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Policy Analyst

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