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Evaluation effectively thwarts Hawaii’s ability to retain teachers

Viewpoint

The bad news: Yet another independent national body just weeks ago ranked Hawaii dead last in the nation for teacher pay and job conditions.

The good news: There is an easy fix — toss out Hawaii’s Educator Effectiveness System, the whole kit and caboodle. Use the money that would be spent on continuing this atrocity to pay teachers enough to make it possible to stay on the job.

The Board of Education has gone along with the Department of Education line on this for far too long, the directors unable to see the forest through the trees. The PEP-T evaluation system was working perfectly well until it was decided by the DOE hierarchy that more was needed to satisfy the whims of Arne Duncan, the former U.S. secretary of education, and the federal Race to the Top education reform program. Ironically, the impetus for embracing this failed program was in gaining an extra $75 million over four years. So why not spend a billion to get there?

Think of it: An unreported sum of expenses racked up by administrating and operating EES has cost the state the ability to retain teachers. How much has it cost? How about starting with the cost of the many extra vice principals hired statewide simply to implement EES? What was the cost of their training? Likely, way too much, because when their primary task was to observe teachers teaching, vice principals spent much of time typing on laptops every word spoken by those observed. Anyone want to argue that the newly trained came up with objective conclusions?

What was the cost of aggregating the so-called data resulting from the high-stakes testing at the heart of this fiasco? What was the cost of mandating the purchase of new curriculum aligned with Common Core and the testing? What were the costs of the testing?

Ironically, at a Board of Education meeting Oct. 4, the board’s finance committee was presented a budget for the next school year. Some of the committee members questioned the need for hiring several data analysts at six-figure salaries. “Must-have” or “would be nice,” the DOE contingent was asked. “Must have” of course, the skeptical members were told, perhaps because the justification provided was nominal and obfuscated, a tactic typical of the DOE bureaucracy.

Has anyone asked for an audit of this mess? Does anyone in government really want an audit of this mess? Likely not, because when teachers here have endured decades of hand-wringing by the state when it comes to paying them, when they are told there is no money to adequately compensate them, who would want to admit that teachers could have been paid well if not for spending exorbitant sums to conduct business as usual under the shibai perpetrated by bureaucrats.

What was the end result of all this expense? Less than one-half percent of Hawaii’s teachers were evaluated as unsatisfactory. The same result could have been reached through PEP-T at no extra cost. In the meantime, morale expressed by virtually every teacher I come in contact with has plummeted, as they lose the struggle to keep up with the cost of living here. Teachers have come to me in tears after looking forward to their raise, only to find it was negated by rising medical premiums. Totally demoralized, they have told me that they are leaving Hawaii, no longer willing to work two or three jobs in order to make rent. Several good teachers I have known well have already left.

The realization leaves one with an empty feeling.

* Alan Isbell is a 4th-grade teacher at Wailuku Elementary School and president of the Maui Chapter of the Hawaii State Teachers Association union, representing 1,458 teachers.

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