Senate Bill 2216

The big news on Senate Bill 2216 (aka: Ed Reform '09....'though is it still '09 if it passes in '10?) is that the House Democrats are caucusing on Beacon Hill on Wednesday ON THE BILL.

If you haven't yet gotten in touch with your rep (and you're represented by a Democrat in the House), DO SO before Wednesday! If they have concerns to raise, this is their chance; you need to let them know your concerns about the bill before they get there.

A few concerns of mine that you might share:

• it lifts the cap on charters in underperforming districts (for which one might well read "urban districts"). This is being presented as "better than having no cap at all" while we all run screaming from the threat of a ballot question on charters. This is no way to make law. Also, this directly penalizes the districts most at risk already; does anyone really think that Worcester can afford to lose 19% of their annual budget to charters? We already know that charters are actively discouraging parents of students with special needs from applying and staying in charters; the attempt made by the Legislature to reverse this, while commendable, has no more teeth than the rest of the requirements currently ignored by many charters (that their teachers be certified or pass state tests, for example).
• this continues the aggregation of power by the Commissioner of Education who answers to...who, exactly? The governor? Chronically underperforming schools would be answerable in their turnaround to the Commissioner, who is far away from the schools. Moving decision-making power away from the community in question is the wrong direction.
• this continues the direction of using the MCAS as either the sole or most important method of evaluating students. Until we get away from this, we are going to have "underperforming" (or insert most recent lingo here) urban districts.
• it puts the superintendent, an employee, in the position of negotiating contracts with other employees. As most superintendent contracts contain language that give them comparable benefits with other employees, this is a conflict of interest.

You might have your own concerns; feel free to add them in the comments. Whatever you do, make sure your rep hears from you!