By Larry Grau, DFER Indiana State Director
It’s officially mid-June, and that means most states across the nation have ended or are ending their legislative sessions. In several instances, legislatures are adjourning after passing significant education reform policies. On Monday, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois signed the high-profile omnibus education reform bill SB 7 with the almost unanimous support of the Democratic-controlled state legislature. Virtually all of the other states, however, involve newly elected Republican governors and Republican state legislatures who have pursued far-reaching and frequently controversial changes in laws in a number of policy areas.
Included in these Republican efforts have been some solid education reforms. Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN) led the passage of a new law that makes significant improvements in the quality of the state’s teacher evaluations. The tenure reform bill that passed the Michigan House yesterday makes some solid if not extraordinary changes to the teacher tenure process. Others are, at best, a mixed bag. For instance, Governors Scott Walker (WI) and John Kasich (OH) have seemingly sought to pass education reforms to fulfill other interests – to take down public employee unions, protect the livelihood of for-profit education ventures, to redistribute precious funds toward those with the least need at the expense of those with the greatest disadvantages, or to simply take a heavy-handed shot at public educators. There’s very little in either of these Governor’s efforts that was driven first and foremost by what would most improve education for students.
The next stage in the process of enacting these new initiatives is implementation – a process that is prompting a host of strange, emotional, and interesting reactions. While education policy debates have raged on a variety of topics, primary focus has been placed on the following issues: strengthening and expanding charter schools, increasing school choice, and improving teacher quality through more meaningful and rigorous teacher evaluations. Ideally, these evaluations will then be used to make better hiring, retention, and training decisions, along with basing teacher compensation on evaluation results and teacher effectiveness.