Education bill ends ban on using test data for scoring teachers

Student test data can be used to evaluate teachers' performances but not to discipline or dismiss them, under a bill passed Thursday by the Senate as part of a package of education-related initiatives.

That measure and other education-related bills approved by the Senate were expected to pass the Assembly, which met late into the night on Thursday.

The end of the ban on using student test data to evaluate teachers is viewed as necessary to meet the minimum requirements for the state to be considered for a share of $4.35 billion in federal stimulus money. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had called Wisconsin's law "ridiculous" and said any states with such a ban would be ineligible for Race to the Top funds.

"We're trying to do everything we can as a state to make sure we have a top-notch application," said state Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine), chairman of the Senate Education Committee. The Senate approved the bill 18-14.

Critics contend that the bill as drafted by Democratic legislators does little to breach the firewall between student data and teacher evaluations. In fact, they said, by making any teacher evaluation changes a mandatory subject of contract negotiations, as the measure calls for, school districts could have even more difficulty improving teacher quality.

"This is a joke," state Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) said.

Also against the bill was John Ashley, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, who said it did nothing to help remove ineffective teachers from classrooms.

"The language that's being presented is more interested in protecting the teachers," he said. "It doesn't seem to be in the spirit of what the secretary and the president were talking about."

Lining up in favor of the bill was the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's politically powerful teachers union. WEAC President Mary Bell told legislators the change acknowledges a single test score doesn't measure instructional effectiveness and gives teachers a seat at the table in deciding how test results will be used.

Another bill passed by the Senate on Thursday would require the leaders of the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Technical College System and the Department of Public Instruction to establish a system that would track student data from preschool programs through postsecondary education. The different agencies would exchange data to evaluate education programs.

The DPI has received $8.63 million in federal grants and has begun work on creating such a long-range data system, making it unclear whether additional state money will be necessary, according to an evaluation by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. That measure passed the Senate 25-7, with state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) raising privacy concerns about creating such a database.

The Senate also approved bills that:

•?Encourage school boards and other entities that establish charter schools to consider the principles and standards for quality charter schools set by the National Association of Charter School Administrators. This already is a requirement for independent charter schools affiliated with the City of Milwaukee, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside and Milwaukee Area Technical College.

•?Change the agency to which Milwaukee Public Schools can apply for an annual grant to improve student achievement to the state Department of Public Instruction from the Department of Administration.

Absent from the package of education bills considered by the Legislature on Thursday were some of Gov. Jim Doyle's more dramatic and controversial proposals - a measure that would give the Milwaukee mayor the power to appoint the MPS superintendent and another that would allow the state schools superintendent to intervene in chronically failing schools. The governor has said a special session could be scheduled to take up some of the education legislation.