By COLIN M. STEWART
Tribune-Herald Staff Writer
As contract negotiations continue between the state and its public school teachers, a newly adopted teacher evaluations policy remains a sticking point.
The Hawaii Board of Education maintains that instituting a system for regular teacher evaluations that are, at least in part, tied to student achievement is necessary to push the state’s public school system forward, as well as qualify for $75 million in funding through the federal Race to the Top initiative.
Meanwhile, the Hawaii State Teachers Association argues that teacher evaluations are already covered in their current contract, and that the new effort is a unilateral effort to skirt the collective bargaining process.
“The teachers are not opposed to any evaluation,” explained union President Wil Okabe on Wednesday afternoon. “But this is a new evaluation system we are talking about.
“The understanding was that the HSTA would be able to work with our employer and that we had to negotiate the terms. Trying to circumvent that agreement does not sit well with the teachers. We want them (the BOE) not to supercede the collective bargaining rights in the state of Hawaii.
“All we want is to be able to sit down to the table with administrators and help develop the tools on evaluation.”
On April 17, the Board of Education unanimously voted in favor of a plan that would tie teachers’ and principals’ pay to their performance, as well as develop evaluation criteria at Hawaii’s roughly 250 public schools.
The board said it aims to have the new policies implemented during the 2013-14 school year. Meanwhile, the Department of Education is expected to present its plan for implementation of the evaluations by May 31.
Teachers’ concerns about the evaluation policy are certainly valid, insisted Big Isle BOE member Brian De Lima, but they may be too hasty. Teachers’ discontent with the BOE may be due to a failure to make clear what the plans mean for teachers.
“More communication is necessary,” De Lima said Wednesday. “With more experience in the pilot project and more discussion, there will be better understanding of what the evaluation system is.
“The bottom line is, all the people who are going to be doing the evaluations, the principals, they’re all teachers. All the administrators that are working on the design and administering the evaluation program, they are all teachers. … I said to the teachers that I don’t think this evaluation system is something they should be concerned about, because the reality is a high percentage of our teachers, maybe 95 percent, are effective teachers. And I think this evaluation process is going to bear that out. “
At a recent community meeting hosted by the BOE in Waikoloa, the majority of those in attendance appeared to be teachers, De Lima said, and most were there to speak out about the evaluations system. The overall fear, he said, was that teachers would “buy into” a new evaluation system, do what was expected of them, and “then they don’t receive the financial rewards that were envisioned when the system was designed,” he said.
“There’s also the criticism about (the evaluations being tied to) student performance. There’s the belief that student achievement is impacted on what they’re taught, how they’re taught, how long they’re taught. But one of the most important factors is student motivation. And they wonder, is it fair to certain teachers if some teachers’ students are motivated and others’ are not motivated. … Those are factors that need to be taken into account in a fair evaluation system.”
Currently, the state DOE is operating a pilot teacher evaluation program in 18 schools in what are known as Hawaii’s “Zones of School Innovation” — academically struggling areas in rural or remote regions that are difficult to staff — in the Nanakuli-Waianae and Ka‘u-Keaau-Pahoa complex areas. The pilot program is assessing data from teacher evaluations to guide the process of instituting evaluations throughout the state. But, that data “shall not result in adverse consequences for teachers or principals,” according to the policy.
Recently, the school system announced that 63 more schools had volunteered to join that pilot program. And on Tuesday, the DOE announced that each of those schools will receive a total of three iPads, totaling 189 iPads at a cost of $115,000, to aid in the evaluations. The handheld tablet computers are part of a donation by the Hawaii Business Roundtable.
“Outside of family factors, effective teaching has the single most significant impact on students’ learning; this is true across socio-economic levels,” said Gov. Neil Abercrombie in a prepared release. “It is encouraging to see Hawaii’s business leaders investing in the education of their companies’ future managers and team members by getting behind a pilot program that advances local student achievement and supports our teachers through a performance management system.”
Negotiations between HSTA and the state took place April 18-20, and will continue on Monday, Tueday and May 7, Okabe said.
Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
