GROUP URGES TEACHERS’ RAISES BASED ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

The local chapter of Educators 4 Excellence - part of the warp+weave of ®eform, Inc.– and a component in the new CLASS Coalition, offers a couple of plans …on the very day Superintendent Deasy must reveal the details of his budget proposal prior to next Tuesday’s board meeting.

By Howard Blume, LA Times | http://lat.ms/16ju9N8

June 13, 2013, 8:00 a.m. ::  A local advocacy group is pushing for teachers' raises and bonuses based on whether instructors are willing to take on difficult assignments and on whether they deliver measurable student achievement gains.

The proposals are part of two policy papers that were developed by a small group of Los Angeles-area teachers under the guidance of Educators 4 Excellence, a foundation-funded group with a local branch.

from the E4E/LA website: The first paper, “Building for the Future: A Toolbox for Attracting and Retaining Great Teachers in Hard-to-Staff Schools” provides a wide array of strategies for bringing in and keeping talent in the public school system. The second paper, “STEP: A Career Pathway for Supporting Teachers as Empowered Professionals” hones in on helping teachers advance in their careers, which studies have shown is critical to keeping them in the profession. On the E4E/LA website visitors are asked to endorse the reccomendations …but no copies of the position papers are provided.

The group is seeking to create an alternative to the local teachers union for instructors who want to get involved in political and policy issues. The group's principles include using student standardized test scores as part of a teacher's performance evaluation.

Such scores also should be tied to raises, to tenure decisions and, when necessary, to layoffs, according to the position papers.

The policy recommendations include an array of strategies, some of which echo proposals by the union, United Teachers Los Angeles. The union, however, has rejected the idea of pay linked to student performance on state tests.

The group has scheduled a news conference for Thursday afternoon to release the policy papers officially. The group announced that L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy would attend as well as two board members, Monica Garcia and newly elected member Monica Ratliff.

The Educators 4 Excellence proposals also include turning over hiring decisions to schools and starting the process early enough so that campuses are not forced into last-minute decisions from a limited applicant pool.

One proposal suggests four categories of teachers based on a sustained rating as "effective" or "highly effective" over time. The highest rated teachers would take on mentoring and leadership roles and receive more money for these duties.

Both papers contain a "Letter to the Mayor," but don't clearly specify whether the addressee is outgoing mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or his soon-to-be successor, Eric Garcetti. The timing suggests that the group is vying to get its favored policies into the new mayor's playbook.

The release also takes place as the Board of Education is poised to vote on a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Several board members, along with union leaders, have suggested that available resources should be used to restore staff positions lost during the recent recession and reduce class sizes.

Teachers union President Warren Fletcher had no immediate comment, pending his review of the recommendations. But critics of pay-for-performance have cited research suggesting that such incentives typically fail, in part because the vast majority of teachers already are putting forth their best effort.