[Vision2020] New York Times article on Idaho education

[Kenneth Marcy]

            What Do Teachers Deserve? In Idaho, Referendum May Offer Answer


            By KIRK JOHNSON
            <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/kirk_johnson/index.html>


            Published: September 23, 2012

BOISE, Idaho --- In the struggle to fix the nation's public schools, the 
old red-state, blue-state idea is looking as dated as Dick and Jane. You 
can hear the change in the voice of Gov. C. L. Otter, a Republican here 
in one of the most deeply conservative corners of the country, when he 
expresses a brotherhood bond with Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic mayor of 
Chicago and former Obama administration chief of staff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/us/idaho-education-overhaul-is-subject-of-referendum.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www 


"I could empathize with Rahm and what he was going through," Mr. Otter, 
better known as "Butch," said about the recently settled teachers' 
strike in Chicago during an interview here in the State Capitol.

"It's not the teachers," Mr. Otter said, paraphrasing Mr. Emanuel's 
tough-guy script from a news conference at the height of the standoff. 
"It's the union bosses."

Chicago's fight may be over, but in Idaho, where a three-part 
proposition <http://www.sos.idaho.gov/elect/inits/2012refer.htm> on 
performance pay, tenure and technology in the classroom is roaring 
toward Election Day, the debate over schools has morphed into a harsh 
discussion about whom the voters should trust. And as Mr. Otter's attack 
line shows, the political and social battle lines are blurred --- 
neither predictably conservative nor liberal, and often tinged with 
emotion about what schools can and might be.

South Dakota 
<http://sdsos.gov/content/html/elections/electvoterpdfs/2012/2012%20BQ%20Pro%20Con%20Pamphlet%20final.pdf> 
and Michigan 
<http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Statewide_Bal_Prop_Status_145801_7.pdf> 
also have questions on their ballots that ask voters to weigh in on 
collective bargaining. Voters in California and Arizona will decide on 
new or expanded taxes to support their schools. At least 20 state 
legislatures addressed teacher tenure this year, most of them shifting 
power from unions to districts, according to the National Conference of 
State Legislatures, a nonpartisan group.

But Idaho's track through the faculty lounge --- closely watched by 
labor and education interests around the nation --- is still a case 
apart in the magnitude of the changes and how they came to be.

In a mostly rural state where the recession was particularly brutal in 
construction and manufacturing, lawmakers carved some of the deepest 
cuts in school spending in the nation. Per-pupil outlays fell 19 percent 
between the 2008 and 2013 fiscal years --- only Arizona, Alabama and 
Oklahoma cut more --- according to a report 
<http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3825> by the Center on 
Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy research group focused on low- 
and moderate-income families.

In 2011 the Legislature passed, and Mr. Otter signed, a regulatory 
overhaul of public education: eliminating tenure and stripping teachers 
of most collective bargaining rights, yet promising hand-held computers 
for students.

That created the context that both sides are now fighting over in 
television ads and political broadsides. The teachers' union and its 
allies wonder if the state's regulatory changes were sincerely aimed at 
improving schools, or a cynical move --- with the recession as cover 
story --- to eliminate one of the last vestiges of union life in a 
fiercely anti-union state.

The governor and his allies ask if teachers really want the best for 
students, or if they are fighting to defend cushy rights in setting 
schedules and curriculums that few other workers enjoy.

The question of whether public employees in general have it too good in 
a transformed global economy has echoed in other states, of course. Last 
year in Ohio, residents struck down a package of laws that reduced 
public employee perks. The recall election in Wisconsin this year was a 
public-worker debate by proxy, as Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who 
had pushed through a rights-reduction package, was reconfirmed.

Here it is all about what happens in the classroom.

"If you look at polling, union leaders are one of the least respected 
when it comes to getting information about education, but teachers are 
always at the top," said Tom Luna, Idaho's superintendent of public 
instruction, who led the overhaul drive as the publicly elected head of 
the school system.

Firing back, teachers and their union representatives say the overhaul, 
formulated during Idaho's application for federal funds in the Obama 
administration's Race to the Top education incentive program, was mostly 
about austerity.

"He tried to claim there was a need for reform, when in actuality it was 
a political answer to our economic conditions," said Robin Nettinga, the 
executive director of the Idaho Education Association, referring to Mr. 
Luna. The association, representing about 13,000 teachers, led a 
petition drive this year to challenge the overhaul package and put it on 
the ballot. Its yard signs urge voters to strike down "the Luna Laws."

Some district administrators say they fear that in their bloodletting 
both sides are forgetting the students.

"We just can't keep doing what we're doing," said Ryan Kerby, the 
superintendent of New Plymouth School District, who helped develop a 
pay-for-performance bonus system in the overhaul package called Students 
Come First. Mr. Kerby noted that Idaho's high school graduates have 
among the lowest rates in the nation for going to college and staying 
there, a challenge for the state whatever happens with the ballot measures.

Teachers working to overturn the package say that curtailed bargaining 
rights and the elimination of tenure protection are tough, but that 
morale has been hardest hit by accusations that money and clout across 
the bargaining table are central motivators.

"Nobody becomes a teacher for the money," said Mandy Simpson, the 
president of the Nampa Education Association, who teaches high school 
math near Boise. "I could make twice what I do."

But money is, in fact, driving at least part of the debate because of 
how Students Come First was structured. About $38 million in the first 
round of teachers' bonuses --- an average of about $2,000 per teacher, 
calculated through test scores and other criteria developed by districts 
--- is set to be paid later this year, in the first fiscal year that 
funds become available.

That is if Proposition 2, the one focused on merit pay, survives 
November's election. If it is struck down, Mr. Luna said in an 
interview, the state will have no legal authority to pay up.

But if the pay and bargaining system survives the election, some veteran 
educators said they thought the strife could get even worse by forcing 
teachers to focus all issues and grievances into pay and benefits, which 
would be the only things left for the union to negotiate.

"Everything is going to come down to pay, so other dissatisfactions are 
going to get hooked to that," said Michael Steiner, who taught English 
for four decades in the Idaho public schools before retiring in 2007. 
"The fighting might never end."


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