When critics said they were going to try to repeal Senate Bill 5, Gov. John Kasich put similar language in his budget bill. The House of Representatives kept the requirement, but also gave more specific direction about how teachers should be evaluated. Last week the Senate nixed the House’s idea.
So where are we? How is this going to shake out?
Senate Bill 5 passed by just one vote in the Senate. Though many senators want to move away from paying teachers just for their years of service and degrees, some of them think the governor and the House are overreaching.
They say they won’t vote for a budget bill that requires a new evaluation system, because they don’t want to be accused of trying to thwart the will of voters in case the Senate Bill 5 repeal passes.
That charge is going to be out there even though SB 5 does more than just require merit pay for teachers. One way of avoiding that criticism would be to pass legislation that only speaks to how teachers are evaluated and compensated. Then everybody — legislators and voters if that idea were put to a referendum — would know more precisely what people are for or against.
But there’s more that adds to the confusion.
Ohio competed for and eventually won federal Race to the Top money. In its application, 300-plus districts committed to adopting some form of teacher evaluation that recognizes how students do on tests. So, with or without Senate Bill 5, and with or without a budget that ties their pay to the “grade” teachers are given, a lot of Ohio teachers are, in the near future, going to be compensated differently.
One of the things that frustrates even critics of the existing practice is that efforts to measure how much children learn in any given year are still primitive. Tests aimed at measuring whether a child has mastered a year’s worth of material are getting better, but making that judgment is not as simple as grading a spelling test.
In addition, these sorts of tests don’t even exist for many subjects and grade levels.
Though a lot of teachers are worried about tying their salaries to test scores, they’re more worried about an evaluation system that doesn’t have some objective measures.
Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, is chair of the Senate Education Committee, and she’s reached out to a group of people from around the state who want to see a better system — but who don’t believe that tests given on one day capture what’s happening in a classroom all year. They don’t want to replace a bad approach with an equally bad one.
Meanwhile, some districts aren’t waiting. They’re coming up with their own plans for involving teachers in the evaluation process.
The current system isn’t going to survive. What’s up in the air is when and what will replace it. The new way can be fair and better for kids. But that’s unlikely to happen if lawmakers are too rigid or if they’re cavalier.
Cox News Service