Board of Governors Joan Harrington, Chair Santa Clara University School of Law Fred W. Alvarez Jones Day April 15, 2015 via electronic mail Denelle M. Dixon-Thayer Mozilla Corporation Martin R. Glick Arnold & Porter LLP Bruce Ives Hewlett-Packard Company Dolores Jimenez Kaiser Permanente Leo P. Martinez UC Hastings College of the Law Robert H. Olson Squire Patton Boggs (retired) Jahan C. Sagafi Outten & Golden LLP Rohit K. Singla Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP Abdi Soltani ACLU of Northern California Staff Guillermo Mayer President & CEO John T. Affeldt Richard A. Marcantonio Managing Attorneys Liz Guillen Director of Legislative & Community Affairs Deborah Harris Director of Development Sumi Paik Director of Finance & Administration Angelica K. Jongco Samuel Tepperman-Gelfant Senior Staff Attorneys Rigel S. Massaro Marybelle Nzegwu David Zisser Staff Attorneys Hilary Hammell Attorney & Law Fellow Patty Leal Finance Manager Princess Masilungan Legal Administrative Coordinator Madelyn Wargowski Development & Administrative Assistant Jesse White Communication Coordinator The Honorable Carol Liu Chair, Senate Education Committee California State Senate State Capitol, Room 2083 Sacramento, CA 94249-0051 The Honorable Kevin De León Senate Pro Tempore California State Senate State Capitol, Room 205 RE: SB 499 AS AMENDED APRIL 9, 2015. PUBLIC ADVOCATES SUPPORTS A “BEST PRACTICES” TEACHER EVALUATION SYSTEM AND SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR EVALUATIONS. Dear Senator Liu and Pro Tem De León: Public Advocates supports your proposal to revamp California’s teacher evaluation system and to require school administrator evaluations. We applaud that your key staff invited stakeholders to discuss your goals and hear concerns from representatives of school districts, business officials, and teachers and equity advocates. It is noteworthy that SB 499 was amended to respond to many of the concerns we all shared. Public Advocates was pleased to be invited and to share comments and concerns that many of our community partners have with the current teacher and principal evaluation systems and with the last major proposals which we also supported, AB 5 (Fuentes) and SB 1292 (Liu) in 2012. We recommend that you hold similar stakeholder conversations with grassroots organizations that represent parents and students from low and middle-income communities who will be affected by strengthening the effectiveness of their teachers and school administrators. Public Advocates is a civil rights legal organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible policy and legal victories advancing equitable opportunity. Since its founding in 1971, Public Advocates has served as a key voice for educational equity in California, serving as counsel in Serrano v. Priest, Williams v. California, and currently Campaign for Quality Education v. California, a lawsuit challenging the inadequacy and inequity of funding for K12 public schools on behalf of grassroots community based organizations in lowincome communities statewide. SB 499 would move California toward meaningful teacher evaluations, evidencing both student academic growth -- including use of state and local summative and formative assessments as well as other measures – and teaching practices based on the robust California Standards for the Teaching Profession. In multiple ways SB 499 would strengthen the evaluation system and not just by requiring full compliance with California’s teaching standards 1 which are optional under the existing law (Stull Act). SB 499 requires that any teacher evaluation system must include certain elements and cannot be negotiated away, including:  Increasing the frequency of the most veteran educators’ evaluation from once every five years to once every three  Increasing the categories for rating teachers from two (simply satisfactory and unsatisfactory) to three  Requiring a series of classroom observations from evaluators trained for the task; and  Requiring that districts receive and consider input from parents, students, and community members into the development of the local evaluation process.  Requiring evidence of teachers’ contribution to students’ academic performance through multiple measures, including summative and formative assessments  Requiring that teachers who are evaluated unsatisfactory participate in a district’s Peer Assistance and Report if it has one SB 499 also clarifies that school boards retain their existing right (without having to negotiate it) to establish performance standards. We appreciate taking this amendment to respond to concerns that the scope of collective bargaining between management and labor is being expanded. Public Advocates believes strongly that imposing an evaluation system unilaterally on a workforce that has not agreed to it will not work for teachers and, therefore, students. Importantly, SB 499 will feed valuable information from observations of a teacher’s effectiveness into their professional development plan with the promise of actually enabling the evaluation process to be a force for improving instruction and teacher effectiveness in California, very much aligned with the changes in our evolving accountability system spurred by the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). For these reasons, Public Advocates supports SB 499. We look forward to working with you and your staff to strengthen the bill for both teacher and school administrator evaluations. We also look forward to working with you to build support for the measure. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions about our position. Sincerely, Liz Guillen Director of Legislative & Community Affairs Cc: 1 Assembly Member Patrick O’Donnell Chair, Assembly Education Committee Specifically: engaging all students in learning; maintaining effective environments for pupil learning; demonstrating subject matter knowledge and using research-based instructional strategies; designing learning experiences for all students; assessing students’ learning; and developing as a professional educator.