Commentary

6/27: See our update in the comment section about the bills as reported from committee. The full Senate will be voting soon….

Last week, the state House of Representatives approved a package of bills that would remake the teacher tenure process, change the rules regarding seniority, and enforce a state-wide teacher evaluation framework that would guide promotion and firing decisions. While the bills individually appear to address reasonable concerns about the difficulty of disciplining tenured staff and the “last-in-first-out” system used for layoffs, taken together they have the potential to do tremendous damage to our public schools.

School districts would have to move quickly to institute a comprehensive evaluation system which relies primarily on standardized tests – tests which do not yet exist for most grades or subject areas. The burden on administration would increase exponentially, with no added resources to make sure the evaluations are performed effectively. Teachers would have no guaranteed voice in the construction of evaluation systems, since the bills would prohibit collective bargaining on those issues. Finally, the changes would, in our view, create a powerful incentive for principals and administrators – who face unrelenting budget pressures – to bias performance evaluations so that it would be easier to remove senior, more expensive teachers regardless of their actual performance. As a result, Michigan Parents for Schools cannot support this legislation and calls on the state Senate to defeat the bills.

Not long ago, I had the good fortune to find a seat at a special screening of the new documentary "Waiting for Superman" in Ann Arbor. The documentary is a skillfully constructed view of how our urban public schools often fail their students, though it is not without some serious faults. (Many of those are discussed better, elsewhere.) But the film overreaches when it tries to claim that because some urban schools are in trouble, the entirety of American public education is in trouble. That claim, for which the film provides no evidence, motivates the film's call for radical reform. But if the problems are not so endemic, and if different schools struggle with different issues, maybe the answer is more complicated, and varied, as well.

One of the interesting things about doing local advocacy work is that it gives you a whole new perspective on how the public views school funding issues. It can also give you a detailed look at the fuzzy thinking of those who argue that our schools can't, or shouldn't, be given the resources to avoid major cuts to programs and personnel. As part of our "Project Washtenaw," MIPFS volunteers have been engaging the communities in Washtenaw County about the crisis their public schools now face.

Part I: Reflections on the defeat of the Washtenaw Schools Millage

In this two-part essay, MIPFS Executive Director Steve Norton reflects on the defeat of a proposed regional enhancement millage for the Washtenaw County area, and the choices it leaves school districts facing. While the details may differ, these same dilemmas face every school district in Michigan.

We as a community will be faced with unpalatable choices as we try to close the $15 to $17 million budget gap that Ann Arbor’s schools will face over the next year, with more cuts to come in the coming years. But before we can make sound choices, we must have a real understanding of what our schools do and what resources that requires. And in order to do that, we must get past the caricatures which were painted during the millage campaign and instead speak to each other as real people with real concerns.