Colorado’s Senate this morning passed the controversial teacher effectiveness bill on its third reading, 21-14, sending it to the House.
Senate Bill 191 has the support of Gov. Bill Ritter but is expected to face a tougher challenge in the House, where it will first be heard in the education committee on Monday.
The legislation would tie 50 percent of an evaluation for principals and teachers to student academic growth and would change the way teachers get and keep tenure.
Many observers think its passage would give Colorado a better shot at winning $175 million in the federal Race to the Top education-fund competition.
The legislation has been vociferously opposed by the teachers union, specifically over the change to the way teachers get and maintain their nonprobationary status, also known as tenure.
Now, teachers obtain nonprobationary status after completing three years.
Under the bill, they would only obtain nonprobationary status after three consecutive years of effective evaluations, and could then lose it if they had two consecutive years where they were evaluated as “ineffective.”
Senators briefly debated the bill again on the floor this morning after about six hours of discussion on Thursday before the bill was approved in the second reading.
Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, who has been the bill’s loudest opponent in the Senate, said the bill would create an unfunded mandate.
She said it could cost Colorado up to $140 million to implement a new evaluation system, doesn’t provide for more assistant principals to help out their superiors who will be doing the evaluations, doesn’t pay for training principals in how to conduct new evaluations, doesn’t pay to help teachers improve, doesn’t pay for career ladders.
“Even if we could pay for the things, there is still a fatal flaw,” Hudak said. “What the bill is really about is not helping teachers become effective … it’s about setting up as system to provide a way to remove teachers nonprobationary status.”
Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, who previously supported the bill in committee, voted against it on third reading, saying he couldn’t support it without many of the amendments that would have helped it.
Senate President Brandon Shaffer also voted against it.
Johnston said he believes the Senate fiscal note, which estimated its cost at being $240,000 a year, and the superintendents who said it would not cost their districts a cent to implement the new system.
“It’s how we build a better system, how we get parents to help, how we provide the resources and how we get kids engaged,” he said.
Though he said the costs for creating a viable education system is important and needs to be addressed.
“But we can’t possibly say in the meantime we are going to do nothing to change the outcome for kids,” he said. “I believe this bill helps us in one small step to a larger goal.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
