How A Year of Uncertainty Has Affected Shorewood Teachers

Shorewood High School English teacher Mike Halloran taps the wall-mounted screen at the front of his classroom and instructs his students on how to upload their term papers.

He turns back around, surveys the class with a devilish grin, and shows his students how effective the new software is at detecting plagiarism. He pauses a moment before laughing softly and telling his class that he knows them well enough to know it won't come to that. The wall behind him fills with a slideshow and he moves on to ancient mythology.

As an English teacher, Halloran helps students find their voice through writing. Similarly, in his role as president of the Shorewood Education Association, he has relished watching his colleagues develop their own voice.

It’s a political voice, born of this critical period of transition that includes passage of Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill; the sometimes-contentious process of creating an employee handbook to replace union contracts; development of a teacher evaluation model; and the retirement and departure of Superintendent Blane McCann.

The voice was loud and passionate a year ago when the saga began, and Halloran said now that the challenge “has been to convince people that that voice they found on the streets of Madison in the spring is a voice that they can still use, and still works at the local level, to reach out to folks who are interested in the debate over … public education in our town.”

It’s a town that places high value on critical thinking and the liberal arts, and Shorewood administrators and School Board members say they understand that dynamic. They’ve heard the anxiety expressed by teachers and insist that with or without Act 10, and with or without McCann, they have no interest in turning teachers’ fears into reality.

“If someone wanted to take a hatchet to our school district and use the power and the abilities afforded by Act 10 to decimate our school district, they wouldn’t get elected (to the School Board),” said School Board President Paul Zovic. “Or if they were elected they would immediately be recalled. Before (teacher security) was what the contract said, and now their fate lies in the community.”

Teachers express fears over job security

On a Thursday night in December, social studies teacher Debra Schwinn bustles around under the aging copper-dome at the top of Shorewood High School. She stops to lean over a table of her mock trial students, assign roles and answer questions. She waves her hands around emphatically as she explains the particulars of the students’ case. She seems to tower over the students despite her small stature.

Schwinn is among a vocal group of teachers in the Shorewood School District who fear what Act 10 has in store for them.

“I think the thing most people are concerned about is the standards around layoffs and non-renewal of contracts,” said Schwinn. “I think that’s our big number one issue, because you have people who’ve had tenure and seniority forever who now all of a sudden are completely exposed.”

John Jacobson, a political science and government teacher in his twenty-third year with the district, is wary of the new environment. To him, Act 10 feels like a betrayal.

“I come in. I give it my all. I work as hard as I can to create a creative, critical thinking-based classroom and I have pretty good job security,” Jacobson said. “Now that’s gone. Now, technically speaking, my time here — and therefore, the salary I worked my way up to — could be seen as a liability.”

McCann, Schwinn and Halloran all felt that the current School Board and administration are looking out for their interests.

Jacobson jokes that, if the current School Board and administration were to remain in place for another 15 years, he would have no concerns.

Schwinn said, “Sooner or later somebody’s going to leave. Somebody’s going to get replaced, and who is that person going to be that comes in the door?”

That “somebody” became McCann on Jan. 9, when he announced that he is retiring at the end of the school year. Within a month, he was hired as superintendent of a school district in Omaha, NE.

Shorewood has hired a search firm to vet candidates for a replacement, and Zovic said changes within the district require finding someone with a specific strength.

“Now more than ever we will need someone who has a very acute sensitivity to the human resource needs of the district,” said Zovic. “When we begin to flesh out what our new superintendent will look like, it will reflect that need.”

How should Shorewood teachers be evaluated?

McCann and the School Board sit before a packed house of teachers and community members at an October School Board meeting. Halloran and Schwinn, among others, have come to speak out against joining a consortium of school districts whose purpose is to create a teacher evaluation model. They would rather the district create its own, and after a long back and forth between the board and audience members, the School Board votes not to join the consortium.

Teachers showing up at School Board meetings to speak their minds is becoming common, according to Halloran, the evaluation model being just one issue that directly impacts their livelihood.

Teachers say the evaluation model would resemble a “business model,” in which test scores would be analogous to profits. Schwinn said that, unlike a business owner, she couldn’t fire a student who isn’t motivated or willing to learn, but rather the teacher is punished.

Additionally, Schwinn thinks that teachers might be forced to do what they fear most: to “teach to the test,” rather than promote a creative atmosphere or critical thinking.

“This is a place where we try to teach kids how to think,” said Schwinn. “The liberal arts education is the heart and soul of the culture here.”

Jacobson says that a good evaluator is like a coach, consultant, or partner, and that evaluating with test scores represents a misunderstanding of the classroom.

“If you don’t see good teaching as a creative process, underwritten by good content and knowledge on the part of the teacher, you’re truly misunderstanding the dynamic of a classroom,” said Jacobson. “The idea that we could truly evaluate a classroom with a Scantron test, arbitrarily written from outside the school district, stands on its own as being counter to common sense.”

McCann said, “I don’t want people running around being worried about compliance. I want them worried about student performance and being innovative and creative.”

Although the members of the School Board differ on how an evaluation model should look, they agree with McCann that teachers shouldn’t be worrying about their job security instead of focusing on students or that the district would use an evaluation system as a punitive measure or a way to cut costly teachers. They emphasize creativity over test scores.

“Some teachers are great and some teachers are OK and some teachers need a lot of help,” said School Board Vice President Ruth Treisman. “If there’s some teacher out there being really innovative, they could share that with other teachers to help them move forward.”

Board member Colin Plese said that evaluation models shouldn’t include test scores at all.

“I don’t think those tests are useful and the information from them is not useful,” said Plese. “I’m not saying that at some point in the future somebody might come up with good way of using metrics in the teacher evaluation process, but currently I just don’t believe we’re at that point.”

The state, however, might decide that it is.

In early November, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released its framework for a statewide teacher and principal evaluation model, created jointly by the DPI, the governor's office, the Professional Standards Council, and various Wisconsin education associations.

Fifty percent of the teacher evaluation will be based on student outcomes, which will be determined by a mix of statewide standardized test scores, district-adopted standardized tests, student learning objectives established by teachers and approved by administrators, district data based on improvement strategies, school-wide reading scores for elementary and middle school students and graduation rate for high schools.

The other half of the evaluation will be based on, as DPI Spokesman Patrick Gasper puts it, “the science and practice of teaching.”  Districts will be able to create their own rubrics for evaluating teacher effectiveness, although they will have to submit to an equivalency review process in order to do so. Gasper said that fear about teaching to the test comes from thinking that test scores will account for the full 50 percent of the student outcomes section of the framework, which isn’t the case.

The DPI intends to pilot evaluation models around the state in 2012 and 2013, and implement its own system in 2014.

Collaboration sought in handbook development

More local control exists with development of the employee handbook, which will define compensation, discipline and other important policies previously spelled out in a contract. Act 10 abolished collective bargaining over anything but wages, and requires that districts replace union contracts with employee handbooks created by administrators and approved by School Boards.

Negotiation with the teachers is forbidden, but collaboration has been encouraged by teachers and community members.

Shorewood taxpayers rejected a Department of Public Instruction template handbook in August, citing concerns that it wasn’t collaborative enough. The district opted to create its own. One aspect of the handbook — a grievance policy — did not come easily but finally was adopted in late September.

Despite the tension, McCann is confident in the district’s ability to develop a fair, functional handbook.

“I think there’s a lot in there that we’re going to agree isn’t a big deal,” said McCann, “but there are probably five or six things we’re going to arm wrestle over, and that’s healthy.”

Board member Michael Mishlove doesn’t want to be a leader in what he calls the “race to the bottom” in terms of teachers’ rights.

“We could, if we wanted to, exercise our rights to the fullest extent and conversely deprive teachers to the fullest extent possible over the terms and conditions of their employment,” said Mishlove, “but if we create a really miserable working environment for teachers, where they really are just employees at the whim of the school district, I don’t think we’ll be creating the optimal work environment.”

Board member Rob Reinhoffer wants to get the community involved as much as possible in the creation of the handbook.

“Where I’d like to see us go is to get more community feedback on the handbook,” said Reinhoffer. “This is uncharted territory and I’d like to make sure that I get it right.”

Adding to the difficulty of creating the handbook is the politically charged climate in Wisconsin, with tempers running hot, education facing criticism, and teachers, according to Schwinn, being demonized.

Schwinn recalls sitting in a bistro earlier this year with a few other teachers and being confronted by a man spouting anti-teacher and anti-union rhetoric. She got up and confronted him, and he launched into an explicit tirade against teachers and union members. Schwinn said some teachers are afraid to even admit in public that they are educators.

“Sometimes I’ll be out or at a party or some sort of gathering,” she said, “and I don’t want to tell people I’m a teacher, because I just don’t want to deal with the animosity and the anger.”

That animosity can harm the construction of the handbook, said McCann.

“You work hard trying to keep morale and keep people happy, and you’ve got people criticizing public education from afar, all the time,” said McCann. “Trust is sort of built like a house of cards. One misstep and the house comes down.”

Despite assurances, uncertainties remain

McCann is confident that the community and School Board will ensure that the new superintendent won’t compromise the work that has gone into the handbook, although he thinks it will probably continue to change as time goes on.

“My legacies around here are several and (the handbook) might be one of them,” said McCann, “but I think this is going to be a document that is going to be evolving over time.”

The district will have to move forward, changes and all.

“I certainly wasn’t (former Shorewood superintendent) Jack Linehan and I don’t expect the next person to be exactly like me,” said McCann. “That’s really up to the board to make those decisions, and to talk to the community about the type of person they want to be leading their schools.”

As the district moves toward its new superintendent and the adoption of a handbook, all Jacobson can do is pace back and forth in front of his class while elaborating on the Constitution, make sure his voice is heard, and hope that future evaluation models will reward his teaching. Yet, when Jacobson comes to work each day, one thought lingers in his mind:

“You could hire somebody right out of college to do what I do for less than half of what I’m being paid," he said. "That’s an elephant in the room that cannot be ignored.”

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