Unfortunately, the onerous bill passed the house this week. The CEA did, however, help push through changes to the bill. Check out the story.

Are you being non-renewed? Don't get pressured into resigning, and know your rights. Check out the story on non-renewal versus resignation. Also, be sure to understand District 20 Personnel Policies, especially the policy on evaluation of licensed staff.

Although the House Education Committee passed the bill, the CEA is fighting to remove the punitive parts of the bill. The bill focuses on punishing teachers, and no research backs this bill. Research shows that the following areas greatly improve student performance: 

• time to teach, plan, and collaborate with other teachers;
• parent involvement and support for their children’s entire experience in school;
• meaningful mentoring and ongoing coaching for new teachers;
• high quality professional development linked to student needs and instructional strategies;
• small classes and adequate school facilities and resources;
• and skilled, knowledgeable school principals, teacher leaders, and leadership teams who work together to build professional learning communities that support ongoing school improvement.

Help the CEA by contacting your representatives. We must stop this bill. For more information check out this article and this article.

The Colorado Senate passed SB 191 yesterday by a vote of 21 to 14. It now goes to the House. Be sure to contact your state representatives and tell them to say no to SB 191! In this article, the CEA blog points out many of the bill's problems.

Check out Pommer's speech to the Delegate Assembly about Senate Bill 191. His speech is a scathing indictment of the bill, the legislature, Race To The Top, and the Obama adminstration's education policies. Also check out these comments by Colorado teachers. Furthermore, check out CEA teachers in action and Greg Grote's speech at the capitol. Click here for photos of the CEA Rally in the rain.

SB191 passed a vote yesterday, in spite of the CEA rally in front of the capitol building; Academy Association members, along with educators from around the state, expressed their displeasure with the senate. The bill would establish a teacher evaluation system that is tied to student performance. Implementing such a system leads to a host of problems. Aside from the obvious problems of measuring performance in Sped and ESL, student performance is not simply a question of teacher performance. Students are motivated to learn in large part due to the culture of learning that they experience at home. Unfortunately, many students come from homes and communities in which learning is not valued. Teachers struggle to counter such values. Teachers should not be held accountable for factors that are beyond their control. For more information, check out the CEA's position on SB191.

After the rally, a palpably angry mood prevailed at the CEA Delegate Assembly. Packed with over 500 educators, the Assembly gave an animated response to Representative Jack Pommer, who spoke about the legislature's betrayal of education. Later, when Colorado Senate President Brandon Shaffer spoke to the crowd, he was not well-received, and booing and hissing punctuated parts of his speech.

Senate Bill 191 is a major problem for teachers. Here are a points about this bill that you should contemplate:

1. Who will be holding principals accountable and preventing them from moving non-probationary teachers to probationary status as a political or personal ploy?  Some examples of this concern:  a)a teacher voices their opinion in disagreement with an idea; b)he or she is a member of the Association; c)the teacher has a different educational philosophy; d)in a bad budget year choosing to make any "expensive" teacher probationary so they can be terminated without just cause.

2. Evaluations will be based on student achievement, currently measured by CSAP.  There are no provisions for teachers who are not in a CSAP subject area, and what about events teachers cannot control?  Two years ago, a high school had 2 students who were killed in a horrible car accident during the week of CSAP - how well do you think the kids did on the test during that week?  Recently, an entire elementary classroom was disqualified and given 0's on a test because the press showed up and took pictures of students taking the CSAP test.  It was deemed inappropriate by CDE because the test could have been "shared" through the photos.

3. Principals will be required to evaluate ALL teachers each year - most cannot do an adequate job evaluating the few they have year to year, let alone the entire staff.  There are no provisions for training administrators to properly, fairly and objectively evaluate teachers. We already know our current evaluation system isn't working because administrators are not doing them correctly, timely or in some cases, at all.

4. The bill provides for principals to give written notice of deficiencies, but does not require or define the support or services for improvement.

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS (listed below) AND ASK THEM TO

VOTE NO ON SB 191!

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us. 

Thank you all for your time and dedication to students!

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