With the list of opponents mounting, the author of a bill to rewrite the state'south 40-twelvemonth-former instructor evaluation police rushed Wednesday to amend the beak for the third fourth dimension to try to get it through Senate committees and on to the flooring of the Legislature by the stop of the session tomorrow.

AB 5 author Felipe Fuentes

AB 5 author Felipe Fuentes

Meeting hastily Wednesday evening, ambivalent members of the Senate Pedagogy Committee approved AB 5 on the condition that Autonomous Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes commit to a series of amendments. He agreed, although the wording won't exist ready until today.

Taken together, the amendments would restore districts' authority to gear up local standards used to evaluate teachers and explicitly require that state standardized examination scores be used as ane measure. Sensing that AB 5 is an uncertain experiment in collaboration between unions and districts, the committee is besides requiring that the bill exist reviewed in five years and sunset in six if found non to work.

Merely opponents of the bill, which now include an unlikely combination of activist and civil rights groups, the land PTA, associations representing schoolhouse boards, school administrators, and individual school districts, announced united in their criticisms that the beak has been rewritten likewise many times in too few days for its implications to exist fully understood. And they argue that the amendments don't overcome two overriding flaws:

  • AB v volition limit districts' control and prerogatives  by subjecting all aspects over instructor evaluations to collective bargaining.
  • The bill includes a requirement, not in the Stull Act, that the tests used to measure bookish growth be "valid and reliable" for the curriculum, the pupil beingness taught and for the purpose of teacher evaluation. Calling this a "toxicant pill" to discourage the utilize of test data, critics are predicting that unions will challenge bad reviews and instructor dismissals by hiring experts to prove in Public Employee Relations Board hearings  that the assessments used in reviews weren't suitable for teacher evaluations.
Arun Ramanathan

Arun Ramanathan

"AB 5 will guarantee that rather than improve the system, California volition end upwards with one of the least rigorous, well-nigh inconsistent, and near adjudicated evaluation systems in the nation," said Arun Ramanathan, executive director of Teaching Trust-W, which represents minority families.

While districts are predicting a litigious and cumbersome evaluation, the California Teachers Clan and the California Federation of Teachers debate that collective bargaining – guaranteeing teachers a phonation – is indispensable to an evaluation organisation based on all-time practices. Teachers won't improve without confidence in the system, Fuentes said, and their participation is vital in setting a combination of criteria that may include multiple classroom observations, use of educatee portfolios and measures of student progress, and contributions to the school community.

Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat from Long Beach and chairman of Senate Education Commission, took this optimistic view while suggesting a sunset provision half dozen years after the beak is to take issue. "We are hoping this works out. There is existent potential for a robust evaluation process, demonstrating that teachers and administrators can work together," he said, while acknowledging the possibility that the upshot may be contentious and unproductive.

But Sen. Joe Simitian, a one-time longtime Palo Alto Unified lath fellow member, abstained on the vote to pass AB 5, proverb he wasn't convinced that the neb represented a step forwards and would wait to run across the concluding amendments.

Past the end of the evening, Fuentes was calling AB 5 a "pilot program," although there would be nothing optional about information technology, and Fuentes resisted the proposition by Republican Sen. Sam Blakeslee that AB v exist a pilot only for the twenty percent of low-performing schools that would receive $sixty meg in funding adjacent twelvemonth to train evaluators and set for the implementation of the law. AB v would go into effect for all districts on July 1, 2014, despite uncertain funding for the other lxxx pct of schools.

AB 5 has split the parent community, with Public Advocates, the Entrada for Quality Educational activity, and Parent Leadership Action Network Bay Area Plan among the groups who had sought a provision that Fuentes included. Information technology would require that districts seek suggestions from parents on evaluation criteria and then report back to parents afterward the completion of negotiations with teachers. The presumption is that schoolhouse lath members would at least consider the inclusion of parent and student questionnaires.

What should exist negotiable?

The Stull Human action has been much maligned, and its mandates take been largely ignored by districts. Ane reason is that information technology sets upward a pass-fail organisation with unclear criteria for judging teacher effectiveness. In many districts, 95 to 98 percent of teachers, including probationary teachers, take gotten good reviews. AB v would create iii functioning levels, singling out fantabulous too equally satisfactory and unsatisfactory teachers, and it would require more frequent reviews for veteran teachers – every three years instead of five. It also would require that districts use the California Standards for the Instruction Profession every bit objective criteria for evaluating teachers.

Critics agree these are valuable, but AB 5, in explicitly stating that the all-time practices standards are negotiable, marks a alter. The Stull Deed requires that districts negotiate evaluation procedures but non the criteria for determining effectiveness.

The Stull Human action besides includes a key provision that AB 5 eliminated but that Fuentes has now agreed to reinstate: the explicit requirement that districts set academic standards, by subject and grade, for the purpose of evaluating teachers. As Beak Lucia, president and CEO of EdVoice, wrote in a alphabetic character to Lowenthal this calendar week, "Establishing expectations for course level student achievement and linking it to effectiveness of staff is a key feature of accountability" – one that should not be bargained away.

For years, many school boards accept ignored the requirement of setting district standards for evaluating teachers; other districts have invited unions to negotiate evaluation criteria. Perchance signaling a new assertiveness by districts, Los Angeles Unified has said that it alone has the correct to create the standards for instructor evaluation. So far, nonetheless, information technology has yet to force the result, opting for now to create a new voluntary evaluation program.

But if at that place were doubts virtually what the Stull Human action required, in May, a Los Angeles Superior Courtroom guess ruled that Los Angeles Unified must use student results on state standardized tests as well equally assessments based on local standards every bit part of instructor evaluations. Estimate James Chalfant has given the district and matrimony until December to come up with a plan for using examination results, and to report back to him about the progress side by side week.

As originally written, AB v would take nullified the decision by permitting but not requiring the utilise of test scores – one reason both state teachers unions pushed hard for the bill's passage. Fuentes has since amended the bill to mandate the use of standardized test scores, though it would be up to districts to determine how much weight to requite them. And the bill now says that local agreements reached before the July 2022 enactment of AB v would exist grandfathered in. But Lucia, whose arrangement filed the successful suit against Los Angeles Unified, and Edgar Zazueta, the director for the Office of Government Relations for Los Angeles Unified, testified Wednesday that AB five continues to undermine negotiations with the wedlock and would give the union reason to stall.

The Los Angeles Unified ruling was on the minds of Democratic Sens. Loni Hancock and Carol Liu at the Senate hearing Wednesday. Both said they were wary of passing a bill that might interfere with a court ruling and Los Angeles Unified'southward negotiations. Fuentes promised the next set up of amendments, which volition become to the Senate Rules Committee for approval on Thursday, would eliminate whatsoever potential conflict. Lucia disputed that this could be done.

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