Gov. Wolf gives Teacher performance plan an F

When you think about it, the idea seems to make perfect sense: When there are budget cuts in school districts, and teachers need to be laid off, the least competent should be let go first.

This is not the way it works in Pennsylvania schools. The teachers with the most seniority are protected, regardless of competence, and those with the least experience are fired, also regardless of competence,

So why all this anguish over a bill introduced by state Sens. Ryan Augment, R-Lancaster, and Stephen Bloom, R-Cumberland, that would have considered teacher performance, not seniority, when laying off teachers.

The bill passed the Senate this month, 26-22, while the House approved it last fall, 100-91. The bill was bitterly opposed by Gov. Tom Wolf, who vetoed it last week. For all intents and purposes, the bill is dead, because to override the veto, the Senate would need a supermajority of 34 votes, while the House would need 152. Neither house can muster those numbers, regardless of arm-twisting and threats of reprisals.

Wolf said the bill relied too heavily on student test scores and had other deficiencies, too.

Panther Valley Superintendent Dennis Kergick said there are flaws in the present seniority-based system but said the proposal Wolf vetoed "reeks of politics."

He said schools are relying on a high-stakes assessment system which doesn't adequately measure what was being taught in the classroom. Education and political gamesmanship do not mix well, Kergick said, a point we have been repeating for years.

The bill was hotly opposed by the two major teachers unions in the state - the Pennsylvania State Education Association, to which most local teachers belong, and the American Federation of Teachers.

So why the controversy and the opposition to what on its face seems like a no-brainer? It has to do with who is doing the evaluation of teachers and the criteria being used. The argument follows the same basic divide that merit salary increases provoke every time the issue makes an appearance.

"I think this is a solution in search of a problem, because seniority is really about experience, and a teacher's experience is a significant factor in student achievement in the teacher's classroom," said David Broderic, spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association. "There's absolutely no reason to punish teachers for years of hard work and well-earned experience," Broderic said.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association was in favor of the bill. The association's president, Kathy Swope, pointed out that 16 of Pittsburgh's best teachers were laid off in 2012 because they had less seniority than teachers who were evaluated as less effective.

Kergick said no discussion ever came up at board meetings about the bill that was defeated last week, so he said he doesn't know how board members felt about it.

Under the provisions of the now-failed bill, teachers who receive a "distinguished" rating on at least two of their last three evaluations would have been exempt from layoffs. The bill also would have extended the time to reach tenure from three to four years.

The state Public School Code requires that when furloughs are made, seniority alone dictates which teachers go and which stay. "This illogical mandate has inevitably resulted in the removal of some of the best and brightest teachers across the state, which is not only unfair to all those in the teaching profession but to children, as well," Augment said.

Under this bill, teachers would have been let go based on one of four academic ratings: distinguished, proficient, needs improvement and failing. Teachers who receive a rating of "failing" would be furloughed first, followed by those under "needs improvement," and so on. Within those categories decisions would have been made based on seniority, according to the bill's co-sponsors.

The main issue, the PSEA said, was the rating criteria. It's a complicated system of questionable statistics that can be twisted or interpreted at the whims of administrators. It's arbitrary and capricious, the PSEA contends.

Tenure and seniority systems were voted into law years ago when school boards, especially those in the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area, shamelessly engaged in nepotism, accepted payoffs from job-seekers, bribes from potential vendors and committed other unethical and illegal acts.

There are still pockets of these shenanigans still going on today, although nowhere near the number that occurred in the '20s, '30s and '40s.

While the seniority system is far from perfect, it is basically impervious to tampering. The numbers call themselves.

Don't you also think it is an ironic twist that our esteemed General Assembly had moved forward with this bill when its members wallow in seniority? All committee chairs are chosen on the basis of seniority, not competency. Even incumbents seeking re-election point to their experience and committee seniority as a plus.

As a side note: Before last week's vote on the measure, House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Alleghany, and other House and Senate leaders threatened that if Wolf did not sign the bill, he would not get the extra education money he is looking for in the 2016-17 budget. Here we go again.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com