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It almost sounds like something out of the business side of baseball.
After a long period of service, you’re considered a veteran and you’ve got special rights and privileges when it comes to being traded or signing a free-agent contract. And the same can be said about teachers in Missouri.
After five years of consecutive service teachers become tenured. No more year-to-year contracts, just a locked in job and a career to build. But with a new bill that’s floating around the Missouri House of Representatives, the future of tenure status could be in jeopardy.
House Bill 628 was established by state representative Scott Dieckhaus and deals with changing the laws regarding teacher contracts. The bill would also establish the Teacher Continuing Contract Act. With a few changes in the evaluation process and pay scale, the bill--which is still in committee--boils down to the tenure status. House bill 628 would abolish the status and setup possible multi-year deals for teachers with a number of consecutive years of service.
And that alone is getting mixed reviews.
“I think there’s still some difficult aspects of the bill that need to worked through,” Hannibal Superintendent Jill Janes said. “Eliminating the teacher tenure with multi-year contracts would be one way to look at that and that would still offer teachers a little bit of security.”
Teacher’s are evaluated every school year and for the most part, are recontracted with one-year agreements until tenured. Yet according to the bill, all that would change. School districts, under the proposed Teacher Continuing Act, could be offered a two or three-year deal after their five years of year to year service after their annual evaluation.
“We do support the concept of tenure reform,” Missouri School Board Association Spokesman Brent Ghan said. “Lifetime contracts for teachers--which is essentially what tenure is--should be replaced by another system, such as multi-year contracts and that appears to be what essentially this bill now does.”
Melissa Barrie, a government teacher at Hannibal High School and president of the Hannibal Community Teachers Association (HCTA), says she, along with a number of her united educators, don’t want to see tenure disappear.
“Definitely against it,” she said. “We’re all opposed of this idea to remove tenure. (Teachers) kind of deserve that due process.”
Story continues after video
Accompanying the removal of tenure is also some initiatives, that aren’t specifically named, which would fall under state control. A change to the teacher’s evaluation process would also include student academic progress.
State representative Lindell Shumake, a member of the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, has been flooded with e-mails from teachers and constituents regarding the matter.
“There is a lot of concern,” he said. “My personal principles are local control.
“I like to see as much local control as possible and as I looked at the original bill, it was pretty well defined in certain areas and I felt very conflicted during the hearing process of the original bill.”
Changes have been made since the proposal came to light. Originally, the bill said teachers would be ranked and grouped into four tiers in each district. Top teachers would’ve been given four-year contracts and would’ve been making more than twice as much as the minimum salary; $25,000 annually in most districts.
Those proposals have since been augmented.
“I believe like anything else, the local school board, the local superintendent, the local principals, the local teachers, all those local persons, know better what works and what’s needed in their particular district and what would help the cause of education right there.”
In addition to the tenure status, the proposed evaluation process is still debatable among educators and legislators.
“Attaching student achievement to performance is a little more difficult because there’s different ways to measure different grade levels,” Janes said. Measuring a kindergarten classroom is much different than measuring a high school English classroom and there aren’t standardised assessments in some of the grade levels and some of the content areas, so that makes it a little more difficult to try to figure out how that would be achieved.”
Should anything go through, the bill would still have to make it to Gov. Jay Nixon’s desk for a signature signing it into law and by then, the “tweaking” Shumake said is going on now will make up the final proposal.
“Different parts of the state are very different and I believe all things are managed better down on the local level,” he said. “Local dollars can be watched more closely, for example, and local priorities can be better met because people that know the district, know the area, know the schools, know each other, can operate better and more efficiently rather than it become more wide spread, harder to implement, maybe less applicable to local policies or less helpful for local policies.”
It almost sounds like something out of the business side of baseball.
After a long period of service, you’re considered a veteran and you’ve got special rights and privileges when it comes to being traded or signing a free-agent contract. And the same can be said about teachers in Missouri.
After five years of consecutive service teachers become tenured. No more year-to-year contracts, just a locked in job and a career to build. But with a new bill that’s floating around the Missouri House of Representatives, the future of tenure status could be in jeopardy.
House Bill 628 was established by state representative Scott Dieckhaus and deals with changing the laws regarding teacher contracts. The bill would also establish the Teacher Continuing Contract Act. With a few changes in the evaluation process and pay scale, the bill--which is still in committee--boils down to the tenure status. House bill 628 would abolish the status and setup possible multi-year deals for teachers with a number of consecutive years of service.
And that alone is getting mixed reviews.
“I think there’s still some difficult aspects of the bill that need to worked through,” Hannibal Superintendent Jill Janes said. “Eliminating the teacher tenure with multi-year contracts would be one way to look at that and that would still offer teachers a little bit of security.”
Teacher’s are evaluated every school year and for the most part, are recontracted with one-year agreements until tenured. Yet according to the bill, all that would change. School districts, under the proposed Teacher Continuing Act, could be offered a two or three-year deal after their five years of year to year service after their annual evaluation.
“We do support the concept of tenure reform,” Missouri School Board Association Spokesman Brent Ghan said. “Lifetime contracts for teachers--which is essentially what tenure is--should be replaced by another system, such as multi-year contracts and that appears to be what essentially this bill now does.”
Melissa Barrie, a government teacher at Hannibal High School and president of the Hannibal Community Teachers Association (HCTA), says she, along with a number of her united educators, don’t want to see tenure disappear.
“Definitely against it,” she said. “We’re all opposed of this idea to remove tenure. (Teachers) kind of deserve that due process.”
Story continues after video
Accompanying the removal of tenure is also some initiatives, that aren’t specifically named, which would fall under state control. A change to the teacher’s evaluation process would also include student academic progress.
State representative Lindell Shumake, a member of the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, has been flooded with e-mails from teachers and constituents regarding the matter.
“There is a lot of concern,” he said. “My personal principles are local control.
“I like to see as much local control as possible and as I looked at the original bill, it was pretty well defined in certain areas and I felt very conflicted during the hearing process of the original bill.”
Changes have been made since the proposal came to light. Originally, the bill said teachers would be ranked and grouped into four tiers in each district. Top teachers would’ve been given four-year contracts and would’ve been making more than twice as much as the minimum salary; $25,000 annually in most districts.
Those proposals have since been augmented.
“I believe like anything else, the local school board, the local superintendent, the local principals, the local teachers, all those local persons, know better what works and what’s needed in their particular district and what would help the cause of education right there.”
In addition to the tenure status, the proposed evaluation process is still debatable among educators and legislators.
“Attaching student achievement to performance is a little more difficult because there’s different ways to measure different grade levels,” Janes said. Measuring a kindergarten classroom is much different than measuring a high school English classroom and there aren’t standardised assessments in some of the grade levels and some of the content areas, so that makes it a little more difficult to try to figure out how that would be achieved.”
Should anything go through, the bill would still have to make it to Gov. Jay Nixon’s desk for a signature signing it into law and by then, the “tweaking” Shumake said is going on now will make up the final proposal.
“Different parts of the state are very different and I believe all things are managed better down on the local level,” he said. “Local dollars can be watched more closely, for example, and local priorities can be better met because people that know the district, know the area, know the schools, know each other, can operate better and more efficiently rather than it become more wide spread, harder to implement, maybe less applicable to local policies or less helpful for local policies.”
