Members of the House Education Committee will be asked to print a new version of the career ladder teacher pay proposal when they meet on Wednesday morning.
The IEA has been deeply involved in discussions with lawmakers over the past week to make modifications to the legislation. Though a draft of the legislation has not been released to the general public, the IEA has been assured that the following changes will be made in the newest draft:
- The definition of “measureable student achievement” will be modified to ensure that teachers are included in discussions regarding how student achievement will be measured, and only those students who have been enrolled in and attended for a significant portion of the course can be included when determining whether an individual teacher met his/her measureable student achievement targets.
- The salary allocation grid will be improved to ensure that the increase for every cell in the first year of implementation is at least 3% or higher.
- Every teacher will be eligible to earn leadership awards.
- Teachers will be included in discussions about the distribution of both leadership premiums and master teacher premiums.
- Charter school instructional staff will be eligible to earn master teacher premiums.
- Administrators will need to complete additional coursework to ensure they can appropriately evaluate teachers.
- Administrator evaluations will not require that someone from an Idaho college or university come into a teacher’s classroom to observe or interview a teacher.
- Teachers will continue to receive $2,000 for five years of their National Board certification.
- Finally, language will be added to ensure that if the legislature does not live up to their agreement to fund the salary allocation model, certain conditions will be waived for teachers, too.
Thanks to the individuals who left their workplaces to come to Boise and share their concerns about HB 222. Thanks to those who telephoned, met with, or emailed members of the House Education Committee about the problems with the bill. Your eloquent advocacy and tenacity is what has created an opportunity to make improvements on the legislation.
With these changes, we believe many of the concerns raised by teachers at last week’s public hearing have been addressed.
While the process to get to this point is not one we would like to see repeated in the future, the IEA is prepared to support the bill, once the revisions are made. We also understand that the five year implementation timeline will provide us with multiple opportunities to make improvements, once it has been put in place and we can measure whether it is having its desired effect.
The committee is expected to hold a public hearing as early as Thursday morning.
