Teacher tenure bill OK’d by House in rare post-midnight vote

In a rare post-midnight session, the state House early this morning approved Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal tying public school teacher job security to student performance. The measure also eliminates seniority protections for teachers when hard financial times force layoffs. Backers of the bill say current tenure practice, tied to every-third-year evaluations that list teachers as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, fails to weed out bad teachers or reward the best. The bill approved this morning sets new criteria and more complex ratings. It requires five years of “highly effective” ratings to earn tenure and continued evaluations to keep it. The 64-40 vote came after passage of another Jindal-backed bill late Thursday allowing the state to pay private school tuition for students who want to leave inferior public schools. That bill also eases the way for creation of more charter schools: public schools run by private groups with a great deal of autonomy from local school boards. After an all-day debate on the voucher-charter bill, House leaders adjourned just before midnight Thursday, then quickly reconvened in the first minutes after midnight to carry on with debate over the teacher tenure bill. The Senate will debate the measures next. Opponents attacked the tenure bill as, in the words of Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, “a war on teachers,” saying it will set up unrealistic evaluations that don’t take into account factors beyond teachers’ control, such as student poverty, classroom violence or low parental involvement. The Associate Press has the full story here.