HB 1234: With Compromise Like This, Who Needs Autocracy?

Last updated on 2012.02.12

Teachers stood out in the cold this morning in Sioux Falls to protest HB 1234, the train wreck of education "reforms" that Republican groupthink in Pierre wants to foist on South Dakota's K-12 system, against all evidence of what actually works in the classroom. The cold is nothing new: that's where teachers have been left standing by our Legislature and Governor throughout the process of crafting the latest salvo in the war on teachers.

The amended version of HB 1234 that passed committee Wednesday has been widely portrayed as a compromise. I thought compromise meant we would get rid of at least a few bad provisions and make the bill better. Instead, the "compromise" appears to have been mostly between Governor Daugaard's bad ideas and even worse ideas.

Consider first the bonuses for math and science teachers. Governor Daugaard's original plan was to give all middle school and high school math and science teachers a $3500 annual bonus. The new plan ups the bonuses to $8000 but gives them to fewer teachers, namely to the rookie math and science teachers. Fresh math and science teachers get the bonus for the first five years of their careers. Once they have five years of experience, we cut their pay back to normal levels, a 15% to 20% cut.

Now under the original plan, dissension was just between the math/science departments and the language and social studies teachers asking, "Where's my sugar?" The new plan extends the dissension to the math/science departments, where experienced teachers will ask why new hires with little proven performance in the classroom and no years of loyalty to the school and community are getting bigger checks than the veterans.

The math/science part of the new plan also now seems utterly detached from student achievement. It does nothing to recruit or keep proven, experienced teachers. We're just trying to rope in new graduates and hope we can tie an anchor to their feet. What's more likely is that they will take Governor Daugaard up on his offer to pay off their college loans, gain five years of on-the-job training, and then, when the state of South Dakota cuts their earning power by $8000, take their skills across the border, where they'll find pay commensurate with the skills they've gained in South Dakota. Our kids will thus be caught in a cycle of constantly churning novice math and science teachers.

Second, consider teacher rights to due process under continuing contract (known officially but deceptively as "tenure"). Currently, school districts can renew or not renew any teacher's contract for the coming school year. If a school does not renew a teacher who's been with the district for four years or more, the district do so for just cause and must tell that teacher that just cause. If the teacher disagrees with the school's reasons, the teacher is entitled to a hearing before the school board. If the teacher doesn't like the board's decision, the teacher can appeal the board's decision to circuit court.

Governor Daugaard's original plan was to allow the teachers who currently have these due process rights, the nice folks who've stuck around one district for four or more years, to keep those rights. No one else would ever get them, and continuing contract rights would slowly fade away.

The new plan gets rid of continuing contract for everybody, right now. Experienced teachers still get a written explanation of the reasons for non-renewal, but no one gets to appeal to the board or to the circuit court. Instead, HB 1234 now creates a new show trial: non-renewed teachers can request a non-binding hearing conducted by the Office of Hearing Examiners. A bureaucrat from Pierre listens to the teacher's complaint, makes a recommendation, and then turns the issue back to the school superintendent, who is free to uphold or reverse the non-renewal at will. In the new wording of HB 1234, "the decision of the superintendent or chief executive officer is final without further action."

And to make sure all of the teacher's teeth have been kicked out, HB 1234 gives the teacher the added pleasure of paying for half of the cost of the Office of Hearing Examiners' services.

Under the original HB 1234, at least a few teachers, for a few years, kept some shred of useful due process protection. Now all teachers lose due process, and they get to pay for their own show trial.

Finally, consider the merit bonus pay provisions of the Governor's plan. There are hints of compromise here. Originally, every school district had to play in the Governor's game of giving their best 20% of teachers $5000 bonuses. Now school districts have the option of saying, "We're not racing!"... at which point they forfeit the extra funding that would have come their way. That money gets redistributed to the other schools who do what the Governor wants them to do.

Schools that don't want to give up that money have the option of creating their own local teacher reward plan. They can write up a plan based on either student achievement and teacher evaluations or on local market-based needs. Each year they submit that plan to a new state board (ah, yes, more central government from our conservative Governor!) consisting of a State Senator picked by the Senate president pro tempore, a State Representative picked by the Speaker of the House, and three individuals—a businessperson, and education association rep, and a former teacher—picked by the Governor. If the local plans don't pass muster with that board (in other words, with the Governor) and with the Secretary of Education (in other words, with the Governor), the plan is toast, and the school is stuck in the Governor's 20% program. Schools trying to opt out go through this application process every year.

The only shred of hope for local control or good sense in this portion of the bill is the small opening created for school districts to address specific recruiting difficulties. Maybe Spearfish really wants to maintain its French program and its having a really hard time finding French teachers (how do you think I got where I am today?). Spearfish may be able to propose a local teacher reward program to provide hiring bonuses for French teachers, or maybe even to restore the cuts it made last year and hire back a third foreign language teacher to meet local demand for foreign language instruction.

But if any school strays too far from the Governor's ideological, counter-evidential commitment to selective merit bonuses, the Governor simply drops a note to his Pierre underlings, and pow! that school's back on the merit pay leash.

Compromise? Horsehockey. The original HB 1234 was a train wreck; the Legislature is now pouring gasoline and lighting a match to burn the survivors. Every bad thing the Governor wants is still in HB 1234. In the case of the math/science bonuses and continuing contract, the Governor's bad ideas have been made worse.