"The tone around the table has been very positive," said Seattle Education Association (SEA) president Jonathan Knapp on August 21, after the inaugural meeting of the Seattle Public School (SPS) board for the 2013-2014 school year. "The issue is money."
At that August 21st meeting, Knapp testified about another issue that has emerged as one of three main points of contention in contract negotiations between Seattle Public Schools and the SEA: teacher evaluations. Length of the school day and teacher compensation are the other two areas where the union and the District have not found common ground. Now, both sides have abruptly left the negotiating table without a tentative agreement. On Monday afternoon, August 26, Seattle's teachers will vote on the most recent SPS proposal. The expectation is that they will reject it.
All was relatively quiet on the contract negotiation front until mid-August. That’s when SEA leaders announced their dissatisfaction with an SPS proposal to increase class sizes in grades 4-12. Noting that Washington already ranks 47th in the nation in student-teacher ratios, teachers held a "Race to the Bottom" rally at Franklin High School on August 14 to protest the increase, which SPS had billed as a money-saving, capacity-driven initiative. By August 19, the District had taken the increased class size proposal off the table, an optimistic sign of good faith negotiating on the District's part.
Evaluating teachers
The current system for teacher professional development, growth and evaluation (PGE) was carefully crafted by SPS and SEA over a period of several months and has been lauded for its innovation. PGE establishes a shared set of effective teaching practices and standards, and uses student growth measures (standardized tests) as part of the teacher evaluation process. The sticking point here is timing.
Because Washington State is about to adopt new Common Core standards, which will require teachers to adapt their curricula to a new set of grade-level requirements, SEA wants a moratorium on linking state standardized test scores to teacher evaluations. The state’s new Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced assessment comes online in 2014. Why not wait until then, argue the teachers, to link test scores to performance under the new Common Core regime.
At the August 21 School Board meeting, SEA’s Knapp was passionate about waiting. "Careful collaboration has been our hallmark," he said. "Let's take the time to do this right." But after working so hard to craft a collaborative, groundbreaking agreement linking student growth measures to teacher evaluations, some wonder why SEA would want to take a giant step backwards by scrapping standardized tests as an assessment tool for the coming school year.
Scheduling teachers
Another issue on which Seattle’s teachers and schools disagree is length of workday. The SPS wants to restore 30 minutes to the elementary school workday, bringing that total to 7.5 hours. The additional 30 minutes is to be used for planning, teacher collaboration and reviewing individual student progress. Secondary school teachers already work a 7.5-hour day, SPS argues. And extending the elementary school workday is consistent with other districts in the region.
