Language from amendment 3: and notwithstanding any provision of this constitution, any school district receiving any state funding or local tax revenue shall develop and implement a standards based performance evaluation system approved by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This statement ALONE strips all local control of teacher evaluations from local school districts and places it directly in the lap of DESE. We know their track record of corruption (as pointed out by the State Auditors Office yesterday). Why would we want to place the NEED for DESE to oversee the firing of bad teachers in our Missouri Constitution? What does DESE define as a bad teacher? How can this be a good thing in reality? People need to take a look at an average grade school classroom. One class comes to mind for me. A teacher in my district had 27 kids in her classroom from all different socioeconomic backgrounds. This particular teacher had 8 kids with IEPs in her classroom (one child spoke NO ENGLISH at all, and 2 of the 8 were severely autistic), 1 kid who was living with foster parents, 2 kids who a parent that was stationed somewhere other than the home because they served in the military, not to mention many kids whose families were facing many struggles due to the economy, and family situations that involved health and tragedy during the school year. This was a demographic of just one classroom a couple of years ago. Now put into the mix the push to teach all kids the same standards the same way….and then throw in a test (SBAC in Missouri) that has been funded by stimulus money from our federal government that contracts with corporate giants like Pearson to create a national test that will test our teachers ability. THAT is ludicrous. For anyone to think this is a fair measure to evaluate a teacher is not thinking logically. We agree that bad teachers need to go. We agree wholeheartedly. However, this is not a fair way to evaluate teachers. A standardized test is never a fair measure. If amendment three passes, can you imagine the pressure kids will feel to save their teachers. The whole school environment will change in an instant. Vote NO on 3! DESE needs to be dismantled, not given more power. Read the amendment by clicking the link below:
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:28:20 +0000
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