Meow. Meow. Meow. Public school teachers across the state, fired up by rhetoric spiked by union leadership, are sharpening their claws as Governor Dannel Malloy makes his pitch–and listens to concerns–about his push to reform the state education system and elevate the competitiveness of the state’s workforce. The governor has the audacity to make classrooms more accountable in his goal to improve test scores, graduation rates and college preparedness. Sounds like a novel approach by a Democratic governor considering the all-talk, no-action from his GOP predecessors.
The Connecticut Education Association has launched an air strike against the governor’s proposal to reform tenure, evaluations and low school performance. (The union is doing what it has to do, Malloy is doing what he has to do.) What the governor has proposed may find a home as a compromise as education activists step up the heat with state lawmakers facing competitive races this November. The governor has been moving around the state hosting town hall meetings greeted by testy crowds.
The media-savvy Malloy administration understands it has two audiences: a concentrated group of teachers concerned about unreasonably high standards and job security, and the larger audience–a gigantic pool of unaffiliated voters proclaiming … yeah baby, take on those teachers!
Malloy has an opportunity to grab the attention of voters he didn’t have in the 2010 gubernatorial election. They are largely independent, they’re tired of government spending and they want teachers held more accountable for being among the highest paid in the country. In his first year as governor Malloy had to deal with a multi-billion-dollar deficit nightmare he didn’t create; this year he’s trying to reform education. You get the tough stuff out of the way in the first two years in the hope the economy turns around and you’re poised for another term in 2014.
If that happens–it’s still a big if–where are the teachers going to go in 2014? Support Republican Tom Foley, poised for another run, who came up just a few thousand votes short in 2014? Foley isn’t exactly a champion of labor.
This issue could actually create an opening for Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor in 2010, who’s contemplating a run for governor. If Boughton decides to seek the GOP gubernatorial nomination he won’t have Foley’s money or an MBA from Harvard, but he’ll have something Foley doesn’t have, extensive experience as a classroom teacher in Danbury schools before he was elected to the State House and then mayor of Danbury in 2001. Boughton knows what it’s like to be in a classroom. He also knows what it’s like to be a city mayor. He has a habit for plain speak on both subjects.
Meanwhile, Malloy will continue to move around the state making his pitch for education reform understanding he has two audiences: the teachers he may win over or the greater electorate that wants classroom accountability.
More on the governor’s reform proposals here.
*** Shake that Teachers Union “Weeping Willow” tree Danny boy, change may not be welcomed but it’s long overdue when it comes to education in general in CT. *** Accountability ***
Danny Boy and his minions who want to blame teachers for students not learning anything in the classroom should come and teach for a while–then maybe they’d realize they can’t get blood out of a stone.
The educational system in Connecticut does need to be reformed. Reform of any kind is hard. People panic and don’t like change. People would rather keep things the same, even if broken than suffer through the pain of change. What is the old saying … “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”
As a teacher in Connecticut for 28 years, I want some of the same things Malloy wants:
Access to early childhood education
Support of low-performing schools
Develop the best teachers
But if Malloy really wants to accomplish educational reform, he needs to eliminate parts of the Education Bill No. 24 that would weaken high-quality education for our students. He needs to:
• Restore collective bargaining rights.
• Separate evaluation from certification and salary schedules.
• Maintain the Master’s Degree for Professional Certificates.
• Restore local control rather than enabling decisions about local schools to be made by one state education commissioner.
• Preserve scarce resources for neighborhood schools instead of diverting tax dollars to charter schools that don’t have the same standards.