Needed reforms: To improve schools, stop protecting bad teachers

Friday’s meeting of the Senate Education Committee epitomized why student achievement has stagnated in Nevada, and why the meaningful reform legislation that would improve our schools never makes it to the governor’s desk.

The Legislature’s majority Democrats are, as always, far more concerned with protecting and rewarding bad teachers than ensuring all children have the best instruction possible.

Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval proposed a number of common-sense reforms to turn around struggling campuses. Among them were bills to eliminate tenure; make teacher evaluations more rigorous; provide excellent teachers with higher pay; and eliminate seniority-based, "last in, first out" layoffs of teachers. These issues were examined in this month’s Review-Journal series, "Education at a Crossroads."

Studies have shown that a teacher’s abilities and knowledge of subject matter are the most important variables in student achievement — even more important than a student’s socioeconomic status. So Gov. Sandoval wants to make sure Nevada’s worst teachers are shown the door while its best are rewarded.

On Friday, the Democrats who control the Senate Education Committee did all they could to protect the status quo.

Rather than eliminate tenure, they voted to give new teachers a longer, three-year probationary period, and to move veteran teachers back to probationary status if they receive unsatisfactory evaluations two years in a row.

"We are going to have the best teachers and administrators we can," committee Chairman Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, said Friday. "By helping them get help, we will have improved instruction."

The vote practically ensures an incompetent instructor can set kids back for three years before being fired for poor performance. Would Sen. Denis volunteer to place his own children in a classroom led by a teacher deemed unsatisfactory two straight years? Doubtful.

Sen. Denis and his cohorts also preserved "last in, first out" layoffs. Aside from saving the jobs of lousy teachers at the expense of excellent ones, the practice forces school districts to lay off many more teachers than they would if pink slips were based on performance, impacting more classrooms, because only the lowest-salaried employees are cut.

Rather than mandate merit pay immediately, the committee gave schools until 2014 to establish such programs. The panel supported the governor’s proposal to base 50 percent of teacher evaluations on student performance, but watered that down by letting tenured teachers select an outside evaluator for a final assessment at the end of their second straight unsatisfactory year.

This is the failed culture that dooms our education system to mediocrity. No amount of money can improve our schools without reforms such as these — reforms rejected last week by the Legislature’s majority Democrats.