Who Is CMS?
That’s the question school board vice chairman Tom Tate asked this week, and it’s a surprisingly valid one.
Tate was discussing recently introduced legislation that would give CMS the authority to implement a performance pay plan for teachers without first gaining majority support from teachers. The legislation, officially known as House Bill 546, is in stark conflict with the school district’s earlier assurances that moving forward with the plan would hinge on a majority vote of support from teachers.
The pay-for-performance plan isn’t slated for implementation until the 2014 school year, but laying the groundwork for it is already causing waves of discontent.
The new legislation hit like a bombshell, sparking a wholly predictable backlash of anger and resentment from teachers who said they were caught off guard. So was the public. The bill’s language was crafted largely under the radar by Superintendent Peter Gorman, a few of his upper-echelon staff, and Rep. Ruth Samuelson (R-Mecklenburg).
Exactly how far under the radar became apparent during this week’s school board meeting. Several board members, Tate included, expressed dismay not only that the bill had been introduced, but also that the board hadn’t been kept in the loop about the scope of its intent.
“I would not have put it forward, personally, because I don’t think the board ever discussed doing it,” Tate said. “And when I read it, I don’t see that it mentions the board of education anywhere; it just talks about CMS.
“That’s one of those areas where it’s unclear,” he said. “Who is CMS? Is CMS the board of education, or is CMS the superintendent and staff? It’s not clear from reading the legislation that there’s any need for any board decision.”
The fact that the legislation, which was written by Gorman & Co., apparently caught the school board completely off guard should make answering the question “Who is CMS?” a no-brainer. Hint: it ain’t the potted plants sitting behind the dais.
“I was a bit flummoxed to learn that a bill was written by CMS and was put into the legislature,” said board member Kaye McGarry, looking and sounding more flat-out furious than flummoxed. “That was the first time I saw it, after it was already presented.”
It must be another case of poor communication by CMS, a scapegoat theme that ran heavy throughout a large part of the board’s discussion Tuesday night.
Poor communication was used on multiple occasions by multiple board members to explain away the horde of outraged and frustrated parents, teachers, and students who showed up en masse to excoriate Gorman’s proposed pay-for-performance plan and its accompanying battery of tests that will be used to help gauge teacher effectiveness.
The new tests, 52 in all, cost about $2 million at a time when the district is laying off upwards of 600 educators, ostensibly for budget reasons. That’s in addition to about $300,000 in Ed Shed administrative costs to oversee the testing.
Exorbitant expense aside, the new tests, which launched with a trail run last week and continue with another round next month, take away from valuable classroom instructional time, teachers contend, and have no history of proven effectiveness.
The majority of public speakers at Tuesday’s board meeting shared that sentiment – loudly, passionately and repeatedly.
“We’re hearing more about what’s wrong with it than what’s right about it,” said board member Joyce Waddell. “We need to stop and evaluate where we are, before moving forward. We have to have buy-in from teachers and parents.”
Board members McGarry and Richard McElrath also urged the district to put the brakes on the program.
Nonsense, argued other board members and the superintendent. The reason for the discontent and concern among teachers, parents and students isn’t because Gorman’s performance pay plan might be horribly flawed, or because the teachers might be right and the pricey new tests, the funky and unproven “value added” teacher effectiveness ratings, the classroom spy cameras, and the layers of bureaucracy being added to implement and oversee the whole shebang is a train wreck waiting to happen that will do little to help improve academic achievement; no, it’s just because CMS hasn’t done a good enough job communicating how wonderfully great the performance pay plan is.
“I think we used to do a better job with our top-down, campaign-type communication, but that was before we cut our communication staff to eight people,” board member Trent Merchant said of the district’s nearly $2 million PR department. “There’s just nobody there anymore.”
It’s unclear, though, exactly how CMS would go about explaining how terrific the performance pay plan is, when a majority of the school board remains admittedly ignorant about the plan.
“How in the world is a second-grade teacher going to understand this when we, the board of directors for the school system, don’t fully understand it and when we haven’t devoted the time to it?” said Merchant, who supports moving forward with the plan without delaying to, un, you know, fully understand it. “It’s not that we disagree on the issues; we don’t even know what the issues are.”
So by all means, full steam ahead.
“Families are comfortable with pay for performance, in most instances. We’ve just done a terrible job getting that information out there,” said board member Tim Morgan. “What really has me ticked right now are the comments that are coming from around this board telling us we need to stop.”
To foster better communication, Merchant suggested that CMS needs to “check-in” more with teachers, parents and the public, explaining each step of the complicated performance pay plan process.
“We did that at the beginning,” Merchant said. “We said, ‘here are the steps.’”
One of those steps, of course, was seeking majority approval of the plan from teachers – until it became apparent that majority support was dwindling. At which point Gorman & Co. promptly drew up secret battle plans and introduced legislation – what Merchant called the district’s “nuclear option” – that would kill the previously assured teacher approval.
How’s that for step-by-step communication.
Tate, apparently having regained a sense of who CMS is, opined that the public’s unrest was a result of – wait for it – CMS’ failure to communicate.
“When people fill in their own blanks and they think that they’re right and it’s not where it goes, then they think that we had an ulterior plan somewhere,” he said. “I think there’s a whole issue of trust that we’re dealing with at this point and it’s really difficult.”
Kneecapping teachers with surprise legislation might have something to do with the whole trust issue, but that’s just a guess.
After listening for nearly two hours to teachers, parents and students vent their frustrations and concerns over the performance pay plan, school board chairman Eric Davis came away with this nugget of wisdom: “If there’s one message I know I heard, it’s that we have a long way to go to explain what we’re doing in a way that demonstrates the benefit to our students.”
“What I’ve heard tonight is that change is scary,” Davis said.
Be afraid, folks, be very, very afraid.
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