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Chalkbloggers
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It’s about our schools, stupid
Times are hard, as we all know. Our political leaders are preoccupied, understandably, with job creation. But if they ... Read more
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Change method of teachers’ pay
This article was originally published in the Statesman Journal on April 14, 2012 and can be found here. Changing the way... Read more
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Legislative Agenda
Current Legislative Priorities
- Continued Support of Teacher Effectiveness Programs
- Continued Oregon Mentor Program funding.
- Professional development clearinghouse and improvements at $150,000.
New Legislation: School District Collaboration Fund
- Requires State Board of Education to establish a “School District Collaboration Fund” which will provide grants to school districts that voluntarily pilot locally designed initiatives which aim to improve student achievement by addressing new:
- Career paths
- Professional development strategies
- Evaluation processes
- Teacher designed compensation systems
- Requires Department of Education to accumulate, evaluate and publish student achievement data for those districts receiving grants.
- Taps 0.75% of ESD state school fund allocation to put about $45 million in the School District Collaboration Fund.
- Chalkboard has learned from the success of CLASS that $100 per student per year can finance significant and meaningful changes.
- With 186 districts doing design (we already funded the other 12) the planning phase need would come to about $3.7 million.
- With approximately 543,000 k-12 public school students, cost of implementation for all schools would be about $54 million per year.
- It has been noted that up to 20% of some school allocations through ESDs are unspent each biennium.
- Mirrors SB 1048 of 2010 supplemental session, but has abbreviated and more general language allowing for details to be determined in rulemaking and logistics to be developed at the local level.
- Provides initiative guidelines, but allows details to be determined by each local school district.
New Legislation: Standards for Effective Educators
- Directs State Board to develop, along with stakeholders, statewide teacher and administrator performance standards and report to legislature.
- Requires standards to include element of student progress.
- Requires State Board and/or legislature to adopt statewide performance standards in 2012.
- Requires performance standards implemented via this legislation to be used in all principal and teacher evaluations beginning September 2013.
- Assures local control of performance standards implementation and weighting in evaluation process.
