LA Unified teachers could finally ‘exceed standards’ next year under tentative contract
After years of union resistance, a tentative agreement would allow Los Angeles Unified to identify which teachers “exceed standards.”
The temporary, internal rating would be added to evaluations next year, while district officials try to negotiate a permanent solution with union leaders.
“It’s a bit of a punt, which I think is understandable, because they weren’t able to get what they wanted in negotiations,” said Nancy Waymack, who monitors evaluation policies in 118 school district across the country for the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Union members will vote on the deal during the first week of May, while school board members are scheduled to vote May 12.
The tentative agreement includes raises that will send teachers home for the summer with one-time payouts close to 5 percent of their annual salaries and installs a 10.36 percent increase next year.
District officials expect UTLA’s concession on evaluations will preserve $57 million in federal funding tied to a three-level evaluation system. Those dollars will come in handy, as the contract creates a $140 million hole in the budget next year. District officials are hoping the state will plug the remaining hole with an influx of revenues.
UTLA’s opposition to more than two ratings for teachers won a tentative ruling from the state’s top labor authority in December, which stopped administrators from using four levels to rate how teachers perform while teaching. But even the contested system only offered two final scores of either “meets” or “below” standards.
UTLA leaders fear more than two possible ratings will lead to performance-based pay or undermine layoff protocols which protect veteran educators. Last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided with a group arguing teachers should be laid off based on performance rather than strictly tenure in thelandmark Vergara v. California decision.
The tentative agreement prohibits LAUSD from acting against teachers who simply “meet standards.” So while the “exceeds” ratings can’t be used for layoffs, it could help the district pick top teachers to coach struggling peers. At least that was the idea behind the contested evaluation system.
In 2010, a report from a task force of union leaders, district officials and outside experts recommended an evaluation system that identifies the best teachers and pays them extra to help struggling peers.
At the time, 99.3 percent of teachers scored a “meets standards,” effectively making evaluations useless. Even for educators who were “below” standards, there was little consequence attached to their rating, according to the 2010 report.
Waymack, however, predicted the new rating won’t do much in the way of identifying LAUSD’s best teachers, as principals tend to check the middle box on forms with three levels.
“Often it’s kind of a human nature to go to the middle, and we would want to differentiate teacher performance in a way that would be informative to the teacher and others who are looking that rating,” Waymack said. “A three-prong system probably wouldn’t give enough differentiation to do that.”
It’s also unclear how many educators will be evaluated while the rating remains in place next year. Unlike most districts across the country, LAUSD evaluates teachers just once every two years. After teachers log 10 years on the job, they’re only evaluated once every five years.
Over half of the nation’s largest districts evaluate tenured teachers annually, according to the NCTQ.
The tentative agreement also limits a fundamental aspect of evaluations — in-class monitoring by administrators — to just once. The contested evaluation system had planned on ensuring each teacher was observed twice, once during the first half of the school year and again during the second half.
Ed Voice President Bill Lucia said his organization will be watching very closely. In 2012, Ed Voice won a Los Angeles Superior Court ruling, which required the district to consider student performance in evaluating educators.
“The recent dispute and proposed return to more endless committee work does not absolve the district of being under a writ to include the consideration of student learning in the final written job performance evaluation of every teacher and principal in LAUSD,” Lucia said in an email.
By Oct. 2, five representatives of UTLA and five district officials will begin meeting in hopes an agreement can be reached by Feb. 26, 2016. An additional $114 million in federal funding for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 fiscal years hangs in the balance.
“The 15/16 agreement would have to be revisited if we are unable to create/modify the evaluation process within the identified timelines,” the district said in a statement via spokesman Thomas Waldman.LA Unified teachers could finally ‘exceed standards’ next year under tentative contract: