OLYMPIA — Tension between the state House and Senate escalated Monday over a controversial bill that would require school districts to use student test scores in teacher evaluations.
Several hundred people attended a hearing on the bill before the House Education Committee, after which the panel’s leader said it won’t advance before a mid-week deadline to act on non-budget bills.
“I don’t have any more meetings left before the policy cut-off date,” said Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle, the veteran committee chairwoman.
While that would seem to imply the bill is dead, the bill’s Republican sponsor vowed to keep it alive.
Sen. Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island, said he will add the bill’s key provisions to a different bill in the Senate.
“Obviously the chairwoman of the House committee did not feel the bill was ready to be voted on,” said Litzow, who is chair of the Senate education committee. “We’re providing an opportunity for the whole House to consider regaining the waiver.”
Monday’s twist and turn reflects the divide among lawmakers over how to respond to the state’s loss in 2014 of its waiver of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Washington is the only state to lose the waiver.
That meant the state and 297 public school districts couldn’t spend about $40 million in federal money on struggling students the way they wanted. It also meant that 1,916 schools across the state were deemed as failing by the U.S. Department of Education, and letters had to be sent to parents explaining why.
Federal education officials have made clear that the state will only get its waiver back once it changes how teachers are evaluated, requiring that test scores be included.
Under Senate Bill 5748, student scores on standardized tests would be part of the teacher evaluation process starting with the 2017-18 school year. Districts and teachers unions could negotiate how big or small a factor those scores would be in performance reviews.
At Monday’s hearing, 362 people signed up to testify, of whom only 18 supported the bill, Santos said. Only a handful got to speak due to time constraints, though Santos made sure supporters and opponents received equal time to make their case.
Amy Nofziger-Meadows, a math teacher and president of the Edmonds Education Association, was one of several Snohomish County educators who spoke against the bill.
“Teachers are willing to be evaluated on student growth, but we should not be evaluated on standardized test scores,” she said. “There’s no research showing it is fair, valid or reliable.”
Edmonds School Superintendent Nick Brossoit, another opponent, said that not having a waiver was a problem for his district for a while, but “we have been able to work around it. Let’s not address one bad policy issue by making an even worse policy decision.”
And Arlington third-grader Jaela Thomas traveled to Olympia to voice her opposition.
“Some kids in my class don’t ever do their homework. It was not my teacher’s fault that the kids in my class don’t do their homework,” said the 9-year-old Pioneer Elementary student. “So if a kid in my class does not do good on the test, that does not mean my teacher is not a good teacher.”
Supporters of the bill cited the importance of regaining control of how that $40 million in federal money is spent. They also insisted that the bill would allow districts and teachers unions to agree to make test scores a minor factor in evaluations.
And, they said, it will send a message to parents that their child’s academic growth, as measured in statewide assessment tests, is taken seriously.
“We think that this is an important bill to make sure that we put students first,” said Parasa Chanramy of Stand for Children, an education-reform group that gathered 20,000 signatures on petitions supporting the bill.
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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