The Senate Education Committee on Thursday spent nearly three hours debating two measures, one already approved by the GOP-led House, that would require school districts consider performance, not only seniority, when forced to lay off teachers because of budget cuts.
Over the course of the debate, parents, school board members, superintendents and even a neuroscience expert brought in by Education Minnesota, the state's teachers union, gave lively testimony on the two pieces of legislation.
Education Minnesota, which represents 70,000 teachers in the state, has vigorously opposed the legislation, arguing that it would undermine a recently implemented teacher evaluation law. The union's chief criticism is that it would kill collaboration among teachers and instead pit them against one another since peer reviews are a component of teacher evaluation requirements.
Sen. Terri Bonoff, DFL-Minnetonka, sponsor of one the bills, is the only DFL legislator this session to support revising seniority rules for teachers, putting her at odds with most of the DFL party, which has argued against the proposed legislation.
Bonoff said she rejected that notion and said that teachers are more professional than that. She argued that most of school districts' teacher evaluations plans were designed with teacher input.
"This is not about keeping young people over old people," Bonoff said. It's about "serving students to the best of our ability...this issue is a matter of civil rights."
Josh Davis, a researcher with the NeuroLeadership Institute based in New York, testified that evaluation systems with rankings hurt morale and that teachers with low ratings would be distracted from their jobs.
"When there's any kind of threat [low evaluation rating] to our status... it's very hard to concentrate," he told the committee.
