Colorado's Senate this morning passed the controversial teacher effectiveness bill on its third reading, 21-14, sending it to the House.
Senate Bill 191 has the support of Gov. Bill Ritter but is expected to face a tougher challenge in the House, where it will first be heard in the education committee on Monday.
The legislation would tie 50 percent of an evaluation for principals and teachers to student academic growth and would change the way teachers get and keep tenure.
Many observers think its passage would give Colorado a better shot at winning $175 million in the federal Race to the Top education-fund competition.
The legislation has been vociferously opposed by the teachers union, specifically over the change to the way teachers get and maintain their nonprobationary status, also known as tenure.
Now, teachers obtain nonprobationary status after completing three years.
Under the bill, they would only obtain nonprobationary status after three consecutive years of effective evaluations, and could then lose it if they had two consecutive years where they were evaluated as "ineffective."
Senators briefly debated the bill again on the floor this morning after about six hours of discussion on Thursday before the bill was approved in the second reading.
Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, who has been the bill's loudest opponent in the Senate, said the bill would create an unfunded mandate.
She said it could cost Colorado up to $140 million to implement a new evaluation system, doesn't provide for more assistant principals to help out their superiors who will be doing the evaluations, doesn't pay for training principals in how to conduct new evaluations, doesn't pay to help teachers improve, doesn't pay for career