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Michigan Senate approves broad overhaul to teacher tenure law; MLIVE-June 30, 2011
Topic Started: Jun 30 2011, 10:59 PM (335 Views)
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Michigan Senate approves broad overhaul to teacher tenure law
http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/06/michigan_senate_approves_broad.html

Published: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 6:37 PM
By Peter Luke

Day 181: This is one in a series of posts assessing key developments during Gov. Rick Snyder's self-imposed 182 days to chart a new course for Michigan by July 1. For earlier posts go to mlive.com/stateofchange.

Teacher tenure in Michigan would be overhauled to include classroom effectiveness as cause for dismissal.

The four-bill package sent back to the House by the Senate, 25-13 on the main bill, for concurrence this evening would also give administrators a lower threshold for firing tenured teachers. It also would bar a school district from using seniority as the main factor in layoff decisions.

Gov. Rick Snyder called for tenure change in his April address on education and pressed lawmakers to complete work on it before breaking for summer recess.

The measures were backed by the the Michigan Association of School Boards and and other management groups. The Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union is opposed.

The probationary period for new teachers would be extended from four years to five years under the plan. But a new instructor with three years of positive evaluations could receive tenure at that time.

But a tenured teacher that had received three straight annual evaluations of ineffectiveness could be dismissed. The district would have to work with the teacher on an improvement plan. Absent improvement, the teacher could be dismissed.

All teachers in the state would be evaluated on an annual basis. How a teacher would be evaluated will be determined in part by a gubernatorial commission that will set a standard for annual student growth, a measure that eventually would comprise half of a teacher’s evaluation.

Snyder says every student in Michigan should be judged less according to passing a standardized test and more according to whether there was a year’s worth of academic growth for every year of school.

Other measures will include classroom management skill, rapport with students and parents and ability to handle the strain of teaching.

As for misconduct, current law say tenured teachers can be fired only for “just cause.” The new standard would be for reasons that were not “arbitrary and capricious.”

Democrats called the package both a grab bag of trendy, but unproven national ideas about educational improvement that would strip job security from Michigan teachers.

"We shouldn't be making our teachers punching bags for everything that goes wrong in our schools," said Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor.

Republicans argued teachers would placed under the same evaluation standards as administrators.

Sen. Howard Walker, R-Traverse City, said the bills "zero in on excellence" so that the "best teachers are in the classroom."

The third major piece in the bill involves seniority. Layoff decisions would be based on effectiveness, not seniority. Seniority would also matter less in teacher placement as principals would be given more leeway to accept the teachers they prefer.

Contact Peter Luke at (517) 487-8888 ext. 235 or e-mail him at pluke@boothmichigan.com.

http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/06/michigan_senate_approves_broad.html



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