By Tom Marshall, Times Staff Writer
Thursday, October 14, 2010
TAMPA — Listen to teachers and their unions, and they will back tough reform efforts.
That was the message U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan brought Thursday in a visit to Hillsborough County. He praised the school district's seven-year, $202 million reform effort with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a national example of collaboration.
"I think there is so much the country can learn from what's happening here," Duncan said during a visit to the Rampello Downtown Partnership School. "You have elevated the profession and that's what this is about."
Flanked by the heads of both national teachers' unions, he said the district had earned a starring role in a winter conference in Washington on labor-management relations in education reform.
And he said those who believe tough changes on tenure, teacher evaluation or merit pay can be imposed on teachers without consultation — as unions said was the case with last spring's controversial Senate Bill 6 — are mistaken.
"I don't think any of us like it when something is imposed on us," Duncan said. "I think all of us have to do a better job of listening."
Hillsborough superintendent MaryEllen Elia said those conversations with the local teachers' union haven't always been easy. But they have forged on and found common ground.
The district has vowed to toughen its standards on awarding tenure, support teachers with peer evaluators and mentors, and pay them according to evaluations that include calculations of their value-added contribution to student test scores.
And teachers who can't raise their game won't be able to keep their jobs, Elia said.
"They're either going to leave or we're going to say, 'Let us help you leave,'" Elia said. "There is a responsibility on the teacher's part, too. It's part of being a professional."
The teachers and union leaders sitting at the table didn't bat an eye.
Unions have talked a lot about ensuring success for all students, but until now they have rarely done much about it, said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association.
"All the people who are in (education) are part of the 'problem,' and they have to be part of the solution," he said.
For more details and updates on this developing story, return to tampabay.com or read tomorrow's St. Petersburg Times.
Tom Marshall can be reached at tmarshall@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3400.