General Assembly Reins in MSDE

The General Assembly's "Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review Committee" (AELR) deserves credit for its 12-3 vote late yesterday blocking implementation of proposed regulations on teacher evaluation drafted by State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Grasmick.

The Committee's legal counsel had prepared a detailed analysis of how the proposed regulations conflicted with the Education Reform Act of 2010, which was passed by the General Assembly last spring. She concluded that "the regulations seem to be noncompliant" with the intent of the General Assembly on four substantive matters:

1. The law required that the State Board of Education "solicit information and recommendations from each local school system and convene a meeting" to discuss the issue before proposing regulations. This was not done.

2. The law charges the State Board of Education with developing "general standards", but left the specifics to local Boards of Education. The proposed state regs go far beyond "general standards".

3. The proposed regulations conflict with the law's requirement that teacher evaluations be based on "multiple measures".

4. The State Board's "arbitrary assignment" of a 2012 implementation deadline was not consistent with the statute passed by the legislature.

There can be little doubt that the proposed regulations went way beyond what the law intended. The General Assembly very clearly put the responsibility for developing teacher evaluation systems on local boards of education. The State Department of Education was only to develop "general standards". Yet the propose regulations went into great detail to prescribe exactly what the teacher evaluation systems needed to look like in every school district in the state.

If there was any question as to whether the State Department of Education exceeded its authority, one only needs to listen to the State Board of Education. Kate Walsh, an influential member of the State Board, recently had the temerity to admit that is exactly what was intended. In an article in the fall issue of a publication called "Education Next", Walsh wrote the following:

Nancy Grasmick willingly took on the Maryland legislature in order to be more competitive in Race to the Top, using her regulatory power to interpret a new state law on teacher evaluation much differently than the union-friendly legislature intended.

Set aside for the moment Walsh's loaded use of the phrase "union-friendly". Walsh was bragging about  MSDE intentionally interpreting state law differently that what the legislature intended. Now I learned in Civics 101 that it was the legislative branch that writes laws and it is the job of the executive branch to implement those laws. Something is amiss in Maryland if the State Department of Education thinks it can ignore the intent of the legislature.

At the same hearing, MCEA President Doug Prouty, MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast, and Gary Bartee, Vice-President of MCAAP (the principals association) all testified about the strength of the MCPS teacher evaluation, and their concerns that the future of this successful system was uncertain in light of MSDE's proposed regulations. Prouty shared a 2005 case study that describes how student results are included in teacher evaluations in Montgomery County without "a reductionist numbers game tied to test scores". He pointed out that MCPS has been including student results in teacher evaluation for more than 10 years - long before the current fad of trying to simplistically tie teacher evaluations to student test scores.

One final observation about Race to the Top (RTTT). MSDE leaders - as well as some in the mainstream media - are claiming that changing the proposed regulation requiring that 50% of a teachers evaluation be linked to student test scores would cause Maryland to lose it's $250 million RTTT grant. Chicken Little said the sky was falling, but that didn't make it true.

Six of the twelve states that won RTTT grants did not have the 50 percent student growth requirement; they relied on a lower threshold or simply said "significant" - like the Maryland General Assembly called for. The actual scoring rubric used by the US Dept. of Education on the RTTT applications awarded up to 5 points for use student growth measures in teacher evaluations. Maryland's application earned 5 points. But Delaware's successful application earned 4.4 points on this indicator and they did not propose a 50% rule.

Overall, Maryland's RTTT application received a score of 450 out of 500. It is difficult to believe that the difference between Maryland and Delaware's proposals on this indicator (0.6 points) would change the outcome. Would a score of 449.4 instead of 450 really kill the application?

Just to be safe, the Committee's motion called on Governor to contact the US Dept. of Education to let them know that "corections to regulations proposed in order to implement Maryland’s Education Reform Act of the 2010 session need to be made and that these changes may result in the need for minor changes to Maryland’s Race to the Top application."

Montgomery County has a teacher evaluation system that has received national recognition and praise, and a record of improving student achievement that few districts can match. There is much work left to be done. But we should not allow an unproven, ideological agenda emanating from the Maryland State Department of Education to disrupt a school system that is working better than most.

Tom Israel

MCEA Executive Director.