Illinois Education bill

B

Bayerithe

1,000+ Posts
Anyone else see this?Illinois Education Overhaul Package

The gist of it:

Longer classroom days
Tenure based on performance instead of seniority
tougher restrictions before teachers can go on strike
Ability to fire poorly performing teachers


Illinois government got something right for a change. Tossing more money at a failing system isn't the answer. This is a step in the right direction.
 
Kudos to Governor Quinn and Illinois. Maybe some people here can acknowledge their stereotypes of Northern Rust Belt states don't always hold true.
 
waldo
" Texas' approach of pulling money out of it. "
I am asking becauase I do no know.

The budget that passed the House had 125 million MORE for public education for years 12-13 than 10-11

so how is that pulling money out of it?

I am not saying it isn't. I just don't get how a budget that is over a hundred mil more than the last budget is a cut.
 
Maybe that's true, I don't know either and was really just throwing a barb out there. But with school districts across the state firing teachers, where is all that extra money going?
 
Property taxes were lowered (local revenue) so the state could take credit for lowering property taxes, and replacing the revenue with state franchise/business tax revenue. The state revenues failed to meausure up and in the deal it was set up so increases in the local property tax base became a source of state rather than local revenue. Meanwhile, the state capped potential increases in local property taxes.

It's pretty complicated (intentionally so?) but for sure state revenue increases, even with the acquisition of what used to be "local" revenue sources, aren't keeping up with growth in the number of students.
 
I always find the pay for performance idea interesting. There are a million ways to do it but most fall into one of two categories.
1. Pay for how well the kids do on tests - or some variation of this.
2. Pay for extra work done that some teachers are already doing an some aren't.
The school that I teach at implemented something along the lines of #1 where teachers are paid a bonus based on how well their kids did on TAKS and how well the school did as a whole. There were 4 observations instead of one. There was also an extra meeting each week as well as a very very time consuming lesson plan format.

When it was all said and done, our TAKS scores went down from the previous year. Teachers will get a bonus next December but only if they return. We won't know how much it will be until we get it.

All in all I found it an interesting year but we pretty much learned that teachers are not going to "teach harder" or better based on getting a bonus. It also does not address poor parenting, attendance, etc.

Edit to add that the four evaluations are also a factor in the bonus and that this is at the elementary school level. It will be interesting to see what Illinois goes with.
 
Kudos to Illinois.

To follow onto Larry's post, everyone knows who the good and bad teachers are at a given school. The kids know, the parents know, the faculty know, the admin knows. Everyone knows. The problem is trying to come up with a measuring tool to objectively show what everyone already knows.

I think test scores are important, but certainly not the most important factor (if the second graders were at 25% and then the third graders moved up to 45% there was some good teaching going on but the percentage still sucked). I think there needs to be a combination of things.

Each year I would have a report given to the school board on each teacher. The report would include test scores, anonymous ratings (scale of 1-10 how would you rate this teacher on attutude, work ethic, dependability, craetiviyt ect) from school admin, fellow teachers and parents. Larry's input would be interesting, but I would guess this practice would weed out the bad and identify the good pretty quickly.

I am not for mass firings either. I would take the above sampling and tell each teacher that is in the bottom 10% they have a year to show improvement or face firing. I'd take the top 10% and either have a bonus structure or some other type of perk (these things don't have to be huge- give them preferred parking spots or an extra $1,000 for their classroom etc).

Larry- Would you agree that at your school you pretty much know who the good ones are and who the bad ones are? My guess is that most are good and there are a few bad ones that are either burned out or simply dont have the skills necessary to be competent.
 
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