Will the accountability measures in HO523 make veteran pay out of reach for many veterans, or will schools and districts find a way to get their teachers to attain these measures?
Because the Bill HO523 for “Veteran Teacher” salaries has cleared the House and is now heading to the Senate, I thought I would take a moment to see how the bill would work at my school in order to see how many of my teachers will count as ‘Veterans’ and how the bill will help me improve my school.
Remember this? It seemed like such a good idea at the time!
If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that on last week, Governor Little just unveiled at $225 million dollar teacher pay increase to help make our state more competitive in the teacher pay department. I support Governor Little, and while that sounds great, as soon as I looked at the details I realized that this bill-like the advanced portfolios for expert teachers-is a disaster. If we pass this bill, with one stroke of pen we will ensure that every “advanced” teacher on this payscale will have either a 3 or 4 (on a 1-4 point scale) on all 22 components of their annual evaluations.
Last week, the House Education Committee decided to abolish the teacher licensing system at the same time it abolished all state standards. If it stands, this move would virtually let anyone teach anything in the state without having to go through the arduous process of getting licensed to be a teacher and getting their subject endorsements. At first glance, this move may seem crazy, but is it? In truth, we actually do have a licensing problem in this state and it greatly contributes to the teacher shortages you hear a lot about in the news.
This week, the House Education Committee just voted to abolish our state standards in schools linked to English, Math, and Science. Not amend these, not tweak, but abolish all of them! Their reason: Our ISAT scores that are based on these don’t seem to be moving much. I agree that our test scores are pretty lackluster, but something important to consider: Is it the standards or the tests? Many of these numbers work on the premise that the ISAT, our standard achievement exam, is an accurate measure of what is going on in schools, but is it? Since I’ve administered this exam several times, I’d like to add some information to how schools get an ISAT score that may help to illustrate the problem.
Clayton Trehal has been an educator for 19 years and an administrator for 7,
As I write this, another legislative session has begun, The governor is armed with his education task force’s suggestions, a senator has proposed to raise the sales tax for education in exchange for stripping districts of their ability to run supplemental levies, and the house has just passed a bill to limit re-voting on school district supplemental levies. In other words, things are normal in that we have an educational task force and legislators are busy in their usual task of finding ways to reduce ways to fund schools. In this background, though, what no one is talking about is the fact that the majority of our schools don’t have textbooks and that this is a monumental issue affecting the quality of our education.
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All of Idaho's students deserve an excellent education.
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All of Idaho's students deserve an excellent education.
All of Idaho's students deserve an excellent education.
A blog focused on education and social justice research
All of Idaho's students deserve an excellent education.
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All of Idaho's students deserve an excellent education.
All of Idaho's students deserve an excellent education.
The goal of NPE is to connect all those who are passionate about our schools – students, parents, teachers and citizens. We share information and research on vital issues that concern the future of public education at a time when it is under attack.
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