a letter

As I promised my Facebook friends yesterday, here is a copy of the letter I will be sending to my state representative in opposition to House Bill 628. If you are looking for more information about the bill, click here or Google "Missouri House Bill 628". If you would like to send a message to your representative, please click here. Feel free to copy and paste, tweak and edit, or to use the format provided by NEA.

Dear Representative:

I am writing to encourage you to vote "no" to Missouri House Bill 628. As an educator myself, I feel that this bill would be detrimental not only to teachers, but more importantly to the students they serve.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the education field who does not support education reform, but attacking and blaming teachers will not solve this country's educational dilemmas. Educational reform should be the overhaul of a system, not of personnel. This bill is an attempt to point the finger and place blame where it doesn't belong. Every day there are countless educators spending their own time and money to support their students, going above and beyond the minimum requirements of their job to provide a future of hope to the children of Missouri.

Despite the opinion stated in this bill, tenure is not designed to protect ineffective teachers, but rather to protect those that are effective. As economic pressures increase, what is to keep districts from laying off more experienced, and thus higher-paid, educators in favor of new hires?

Regardless of whether tenure is to continue, the proposed system is a completely irrational replacement. A tiered system is dangerous to the entire education system. Pitting teachers against each other only creates competition, not cooperation, for student success. In my current school teachers work together in professional learning communities to use data to make decisions about instruction. These practices are being put into place all over the nation with high levels of success. I believe a competitive tiered system would put this progress in jeopardy.

In addition, I currently teach a small group of at-risk children, many with extreme behavior issues, who do not qualify for special education. I volunteered for this position, knowing the challenges, in hopes that I would be able to impact these students and guide them in personal and academic success. However, because of their risk factors, they often do not score as highly on standardized testing as other students in their age group. Under the proposed system I would be penalized for their scores, despite my dedication and effective practices. Fortunately I have confidence in my performance as reflected by my administrator's evaluation, but since that would only account for half of my rank, I fear that I would quickly find myself near the bottom tier. I am sure I would be joined by many other highly effective teachers who happened to have a greater number of students with risk-factors beyond their control.

Then there is the matter of districts with a high volume of quality educators. The bill states that there can be no more than 40% of a district's teachers in the top tier. So in essence you are still penalizing good teachers by cutting them out of this arbitrary percentage. In the meantime, we educators will live in an uncertain economic state. My salary could be up one year with a group of bright students, and down the next. That makes it very difficult to manage finances and help support a family.

If this bill were to pass I believe you would soon find Missouri with a severe teacher shortage. If you ask any educator you will find that they did not pursue teaching because of the money to be made or the ease of the job. We have joined this profession because we love children and we love making a difference in their lives. In the end, there is no surer way to drive away great teachers than to create a sense of fear and overwhelming pressure in the career that they love.

Please vote no on this bill and help put some sense back in educational reform.

Sincerely,