Tell lawmakers: It’s time to restore teacher rights!

Two of the very worst results of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education “reforms” were attacks on teacher due process rights, and an evaluation system that depended on the discredited “Value Added Model.”

This week, the House Education Committee will hear two bills aimed at restoring some of the teacher rights that were curtailed during the Jindal years.

HB 587 by Rep. Frank Hoffman (R-West Monroe) changes the due process law by granting tenure rights to teachers who earn “effective: proficient” ratings for five out of six years. Currently, teachers must be rated “highly effective” during that time period, making it unlikely that most teachers will ever earn tenure.

That is important, because tenure helps guarantee that teachers can practice their profession according to the best practices without fear of reprisal.

HB 651, also by Rep. Hoffman, reduces the “value added” portion of a teacher’s evaluation from 35% to just 15%.

Rep. Hoffman, who authored the original Value Added Model bill, promised that he would work to reduce VAM’s impact if the experiment didn’t pan out.

He’s keeping that promise with HB 651. Studies now show that there is little to no relationship between VAM scores, which rate teachers based on student testing, and teacher performance and the quality of classroom instruction.

Only teachers in core subjects are evaluated based on value added scores, and those teachers nearly all believe the system is unfair and unreliable.

A Houston court has ruled that VAM scores violate teachers’ Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. The American Federation of Teachers is currently arguing that point in a New Mexico lawsuit.

Big business will fight hard to keep these unfair restrictions on teacher rights. Please send a message to the House Education Committee and tell members to vote FOR HB 587 and HB 651.