Some Minneapolis Parents Push Teacher Contract Reforms at Capitol

Since 2008, Southwest resident Lynnell Mickelsen, a parent of three, has been on a crusade to reform how teachers are hired and fired in Minneapolis. This year, Mickelsen and her colleagues in Put Kids First Minneapolis find themselves allied with Republicans at the state legislature, and with a bill moving forward that includes both their reform proposals and deep cuts to Minneapolis schools (which the group's members don't support).

The proposed bill would would turn the traditional approach to hiring and firing teachers on its head by making teachers renew their licenses every five years. The bill would also 'grade' teachers, partly under criteria developed jointly by school districts and unions.

Mickelsen has had children in the district for 17 years. She got involved because she says she was tired of seeing good teachers get laid off. “For much of the time I’ve been a public school parent the district’s enrollment has been decreasing, and so I’ve watched wave after wave of layoffs," she said. "Some really good teachers got laid off, while some mediocre ones didn’t because they had seniority.”

Mickelsen and her fellow activists are charging into a political minefield. The measure has the state teachers' union up in arms even though 50 percent of a teacher's grade under the proposed bill would stem from a system agreed on by individual districts and local teachers' unions.

Many education reform figures in Minnesota, including teachers' union leaders in the Twin Cities, support teacher quality evaluations of one kind or another. What Education Minnesota, the teachers' union, objects to is the proposal's use of state standardized tests to make up the other half of a teacher's grade. Education Minnesota's communications arm pointed Patch to a March 27 letter to the St. Paul Pioneer Press from union President Tom Dooher.

"Student achievement is much more than a test score," Dooher wrote. "Art, music, English and other subjects, as well as problem-solving and creative-thinking abilities, can’t be easily quantified."

"The search for ways to identify and remove bad teachers should not be accomplished by trampling on the collective bargaining rights and job protections that allow teachers to teach without fear of reprisal," Dooher wrote.

To further complicate the situation, the teacher evaluation bill is lashed to a number of highly controversial including one that would strip Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth of significant funding.

Rep. Sondra Erickson (R-Princeton), chair of the House Education Reform Committee, confirmed that her committee was working on a kitchen sink-style education policy bill, due to be publicly released on April 27. The entire bill could earn a veto from Gov. Mark Dayton. Dayton has called on the legislature to deliver separate policy and finance measures to his desk.

Mickelsen said she and other Put Kids First members had been meeting with legislators about pushing the teacher evaluation scheme as a stand-alone bill, so it would not be automatically poisoned by other measures. However, she wasn’t holding out hope for a simple vote on the teacher quality issue, and predicted the measure would not see a final vote until near the end of the legislative session.

“This is political games-playing," she said of the effort to separate policy and finance measures. "It’s horse trading.”