Credit: California Assembly Republican Caucus

Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen discusses the education bills that she and other Republican legislators assembled with her during a Sacramento press conference in March.

Credit: California Assembly Republican Conclave

Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen discusses the education bills that she and other Republican legislators assembled with her during a Sacramento press conference in March.

Republican legislators are standing to push for passage of 3 California teacher reform bills, merely it'south unclear what the status of the bills will be when the Legislature convenes in Jan.

The Associates Education Commission spent iii hours discussing the bills last week, with no indication about whether the bills might come up upwardly for a vote side by side year. That lack of clarity frustrated the Assembly Republican leader and sponsor of one of the bills, Kristin Olsen, R-Modesto, who questioned why the majority of Democrats on the committee had voted to send the bills to "interim study," a parliamentary tactic sometimes used when members don't desire to go on the record on controversial legislation. Interim study is an indefinite condition that gives Didactics Committee Chairman Patrick O'Donnell, D-Long Beach, wide discretion to determine what, if anything, happens to a bill.

"In an effort to avert casting 'no' votes on these worthy, important bills, the chairman and other members of this education committee invoked an obscure process that sent these bills to this interim study," Olsen said. "And information technology truly saddens me that here nosotros are, ii weeks earlier Christmas, when people are out busy preparing for the holidays, that we're holding a hearing when nobody is paying attention."

The hearing was webcast merely sparsely attended by the public; 2 of four Democrats on the committee were absent-minded.

Associates Republicans proposed the three bills equally a package in response to the 2022 ruling in Vergara v. California, in which a Los Angeles County Superior Court estimate overturned five California teacher protection statutes. Approximate Rolf Treu ruled that the state'due south two-yr probationary flow for new teachers, a layoff arrangement based on teacher seniority and dismissal statutes that tin go far difficult to burn down the worst-performing teachers, violated students' ramble correct to an equal pedagogy.

Democrats in the Legislature are letting the lawsuit, now earlier the Country Court of Appeal, run its course. The Republican sponsors chosen on legislators to fix laws that Treu said are harming children. They expressed a willingness last week to work with Democrats on amendments to their bills.

Assembly Bill 1248, authored past Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside, would extend the probationary period to three years. A teacher would have to receive three sequent positive reviews before receiving "permanent condition" or tenure, which grants boosted legal protections to new teachers.

AB 1044, by Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-Dublin, would repeal the "concluding-in-first-out" statute that requires all teacher layoffs, with exceptions for teachers with specialized training or those who make full high-needs jobs, to exist based on seniority. Districts would negotiate new criteria with their teachers unions. Seniority could exist a factor, only a "significant" component must exist based on a teacher'southward evaluation rating.

Olsen'due south pecker, AB 1078, would update the xl-year-old law on teacher evaluations, the Stull Act. Democratic and Republican legislators generally agree it needs changes to reflect new challenges, such as the use of engineering, new approaches to discipline and the substantial growth in the number of English learners, although after several years and multiple versions of bills they accept yet to agree on how.

The Stull Act currently is a laissez passer-fail system, with teachers labeled either ineffective or effective, which encourages principals to focus on how to fire a small-scale fraction of those identified equally the worst and not on evaluations that focus on how the majority of teachers can better their arts and crafts. AB 1078 would create four categories (highly effective, effective, minimally effective and ineffective), require almanac evaluations, and encourage what the current law requires just many districts ignore: the use of test scores and other measurements of student academic growth.

"Our firsthand dilemma is not who to lay off just how to attract teachers for underrepresented students. There needs to be an agenda to friction match that sort of result," said researcher Julia Koppich.

"These laws are responsible for pushing wonderful, effective teachers out of the classroom just because they have less seniority, and this makes no sense," Evelyn Macias, female parent of one of the 9 Vergara student plaintiffs, said in her one-infinitesimal public testimony. The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers opposed all three bills last year, and reaffirmed that position in cursory public comments on Tuesday. Breaking with the California Teachers Association, teachers in San Jose agreed in negotiations for the option of a tertiary year of probation for teachers who need an actress yr to prove their capabilities; a bill permitting an exception to the constabulary for San Jose remains in flux.

The three bills got mixed reviews from a panel of three experts that included Dan Goldhaber, a vice president at American Institutes of Research and a witness for the plaintiffs in the Vergara case, and Ken Futernick, retired director of the Centre on School Turnaround at WestEd and a witness for the defence in the case. Futernick and the 3rd panelist, researcher and consultant Julia Koppich, while not dismissing criticisms of a curt probationary period and seniority-based layoffs, suggested that the focus now should be not on layoffs but on figuring out how to rent and retain teachers among a teacher shortage.

"Our firsthand dilemma is not who to lay off but how to concenter teachers for underrepresented students. In that location needs to be an calendar to friction match that sort of issue," Koppich said.

More students volition exist affected by the shortage of teachers than in not dealing with bug that the bills address, Futernick said. "Nosotros cannot recruit if no one wants to become a instructor."

Goldhaber, however, said that research from several studies on teacher layoffs was "unanimous" and clear: Students, particularly minority students in schools where loftier turnover leads to a churn of less experienced teachers, are adversely affected when layoffs are washed in order of seniority. "The research is consistent that if pupil achievement is the primary concern, so do not rely primarily on seniority" to lay off teachers, he said.

Getting teacher evaluations right

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, said that an evaluation system with two categories, designating teachers as effective or not effective, will not provide ongoing assistance to teachers. Her bill, AB 1495, which the Education Committee defeated last spring, would have created a third category for teachers needing improvement.

Source: California Channel webcast

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, said that an evaluation organisation with two categories, designating teachers as effective or not effective, will not provide ongoing aid to teachers. Her bill, AB 1495, which the Education Committee defeated last jump, would have created a tertiary category for teachers needing improvement.

The console members best-selling that a more effective organisation of evaluating teachers should exist a prerequisite to a longer probation for teachers or a layoff organization using teacher effectiveness as a standard.

"Just adding a year without improving the evaluation system is unlikely to accept much, if any, effect," Koppich said. "Until we have an effective arrangement that distinguishes between high-quality teaching and less high-quality, it'due south hard to design an objective system that is non based on layoffs."

Getting at that place has been challenging. Teachers unions and groups representing schools boards and administrators remain deadlocked over who gets to make up one's mind what goes into an evaluation, such as classroom observations, test scores and other measures of educatee achievement, and parent surveys. O'Donnell and Sen. Ballad Liu, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, have proposed similar rewrites of the Stull Act that would require school boards to negotiate terms of evaluations with teachers, just those bills, too, are stalled for now, although they tin can exist brought dorsum in 2016.

"I'k non sure where we kickoff since there has been then much resistance," said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego. Last spring, Weber's beak, an endeavor to bridge the carve up between labor and management groups, was defeated by swain Democrats.

"It's been unfortunate that it appears the but way to address teacher bug is through litigation," she said. "We demand to figure out how to create a stronger instructor force and exist supportive of the teachers we have."

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