Sizemore experiments with 'educational reform'

By DON McINTOSH, Staff Reporter

Union foe Bill Sizemore may have failed in his 1998 Republican run for governor, but his political ideas continue to fill the ballot, and each of his six measures promises dramatic consequences for Oregon. With Ballot Measure 95, Sizemore tries his hand at educational reform.

Measure 95 would prohibit public schools from basing the pay or job security of teachers on the amount of teaching experience or educational qualifications they have, and would require instead that their pay be based on "the degree to which the appropriate knowledge of the teacher's students increased while under his or her instruction."

It's a measure that has teachers, unions, school boards, and the Parent Teachers Association (PTA) on red alert. If it passes, opponents say, Oregon schoolchildren would be subjected to a deluge of standardized testing, and to scholastic chaos as thousands of talented teachers leave the profession.

"There's not one state, municipality, or school district where something like this has passed," said Morgan Allen, coordinator of Oregonians Against Unfair Schemes For Our Schools, the anti-Measure 95 coalition. "I guess it's like a grand experiment, where our kids are the guinea pigs."

Measure 95, titled "Performance Pay For Teachers," is ostensibly about establishing a system of merit pay, but its authors seem much more interested in what they're abolishing than what they're establishing. The measure devotes 120 words to describing pay for seniority, and 27 to describing pay for performance.

About what it's abolishing, the measure is specific: "automatic step or pay increases based on time on the job" and "increasing a teacher's pay based on the teacher having completed one or more post-graduate college courses, or having received one or more post-graduate degrees."

"There is absolutely no connection between seniority and student performance," said Becky Miller, a Sizemore employee and chief petitioner for Measure 95. Miller said many studies support this assertion, though she was unable to cite any of them.

James Sager, president of the Oregon Education Association, says that's a misstatement. It's true, he said, that there's no automatic link between student performance and teacher seniority (the number of years a teacher has worked in a district, used to determine transfer rights.)

But, he said, there's a demonstrated link between student performance and the amount of experience and educational and professional development a teacher has in a subject area.

Thus, opponents point out, Measure 95 could actually hurt student performance, since it would remove financial incentives for teachers to stay in the profession or become better educated about the subjects they teach.

Instead, teacher pay for Oregon's 30,000 public school teachers would be based on student performance. But the measure provides no detail as to how performance would be measured.

A multitude of standardized tests

"The measure is so vague," said Kathryn Firestone, president of the Oregon PTA. "Who's going to determine what student progress is? How do you determine success in typing, choir, vocational education? For my friends who teach special ed, a good day is when that one kid doesn't lose his temper or doesn't break down into tears."

Says Allen: "Their answer to everything seems to be: 'We'll figure out the details later.'"

Miller said the measure intentionally declined to specify how learning should be measured. That would be for the unions and school districts to work out, she said. Nor would she herself offer any suggestion on how such a system would be set up, except to say it would be a shame if they chose to measure student learning with more standardized tests. The comment appears to be at odds the position taken by her boss, Oregon Taxpayers United head Sizemore, who advocates standardized testing at the beginning and end of the school year to show how much students had learned in each teacher's class.

The Oregon Department of Administrative Services, charged with assessing the financial impact of ballot measures, says Measure 95 would cost $47 million to implement and $21.8 million a year after that, to pay for tests in every subject for every student at every level.

"What about music, art, special ed, P.E. teachers?" asks Allen. "What about part-time substitute teachers? Are they going to test substitutes before and after they come into a classroom? It's ridiculous."

Stressing testing to such a degree would change the character of instruction, Allen said. "You'd be prepping kids for a standardized test that would determine your paycheck or whether you keep your job."

Loss of local control

"Ballot Measure 95 doesn't deal with any of the real problems our schools face, like a lack of adequate, stable funding, overcrowded classes, and violence of school campuses," Allen said. Instead, he said, it takes away local control.

"Not only do they silence the voice of unions, but they silence the voice of management," Allen said. "What they are saying is, 'We know best. Do it our way.' The school boards and PTA feel they should have a say."

Right now, school boards, administrators, and teachers' unions do have a say, and in every school district in the state they've established a pay system that rewards experience and education.

In a typical school district, Sager said, teachers start at about $26,000 a year and max out at about $55,000 a year once they've had 15 to 20 years of experience and have earned 45 to 50 graduate-level credit hours past a master's degree.

"A person starting out in teaching starts out $5,000 to $10,000 a year below what their fellow graduates are making in other industries," Sager said. "By the time they're mid-career, they're making $30,000 a year less ... People are choosing to go into education for reasons other than long-term economic benefit. But they have to have more than intrinsic rewards and the gratitude of students if they want to pay the mortgage."

Miller points to North Carolina as a state that improved student performance by linking student success to financial rewards for teachers.

Tannis Nelson, president of the North Carolina PTA, credits the program with a two-point increase in North Carolina students' SAT scores. Nelson supports the program, which gives a bonus to all staff members at schools where overall test scores rise, but says she's concerned that it also discourages talented teachers from teaching at low-income schools, since it may be more difficult to raise scores there. And, she is quick to point out, the North Carolina experiment is only about adding incentives, not about getting rid of pay for experience or education. "I would not ever be in support of that," Nelson said.

Miller couldn't cite a single teacher, educator or school reformer who would speak in favor of her measure. The campaign is not actively seeking endorsements, she said, because no one in the educational establishment, nor any politician, corporation, or union, will publicly support the measure.

"This effort," Sager said, "is coming from outside the educational profession." The measure's unlisted author is Bill Sizemore; its chief petitioners are Becky Miller and her husband Stuart. Neither Sizemore nor the Millers have any previous involvement in education reform. Sizemore had a carpet business that went bankrupt; now he runs a business that runs ballot measure campaigns for money, and he directs the non-profit Oregon Taxpayers United (OTU) that hires his business. Becky Miller, who works for Sizemore at OTU, said she's an artist by profession, and she taught English in Zimbabwe in 1982 and 1983. Her husband Stuart, the measure's other chief petitioner, refurbishes homes for resell. The Sizemore and Miller children are home schooled. Its opponents, which includes the Oregon AFL-CIO, see the measure as part of a larger strategy to take on the public sector, public employees, and public employee unions. "It is an attack on collective bargaining, plain and simple," Sager said.

Allen elaborates: "This is legislating collective bargaining agreements for an entire class of public employees. If you can do this to teachers, you can set up some wage scale or performance pay for all other public employees."

Opponents also think Sizemore's strategy may be to tie up teacher union resources fighting Measure 95, thereby lessening the resources available to fight his anti-tax and anti-union measures.

When PTA president Firestone looks at Measure 95, she sees a voucher agenda lurking. By sowing chaos and weakening the public schools, she says, the measure will end up making private schools more attractive.

"This is," Firestone says, "yet another very thinly-veiled attempt to unravel our public schools."

Home | About