Your Opinion: Retired educator opposes Amendment 3

Dear Editor:

I write this letter in opposition to Amendment 3 as a retired teacher, a retired curriculum specialist at the Missouri Department of Elementary band Secondary Education (DESE), and a current member of the Cole County and Missouri Retired Teachers Associations.

Passage of that amendment this November is not trivial. It will change our constitution and schools. Many editorials and letters to the editor in Missouri newspapers have claimed that the amendment could change radically who controls what is taught in our public schools, replacing much of the local control of what is taught with a top-down control from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Is that claim valid? Consider these words we will vote on:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to: require teachers to be evaluated by a standards based performance evaluation system for which each local school district must receive state approval to continue receiving state and local funding; require teachers to be dismissed, retained, demoted, promoted, and paid primarily using quantifiable student performance data as part of the evaluation system

First, Amendment 3 will obviously have high stakes because a district's funding and a teacher's job security, position, and pay will depend upon compliance with a state-approved performance-based evaluation system.

Second, for most courses taught in Missouri public schools, specific state-created or state-approved tests currently do not exist.

Third, developing such tests, if they are to be reliable and valid, will be difficult and expensive.

Fourth, if the multitude of such tests will be created, they will indeed determine what will be taught in Missouri's public schools, and, sadly, they may be inappropriate for what districts, teachers, and parents want their young people to learn.

Hypothetical example: First Year Spanish in School District A emphasizes grammar, whereas First Year Spanish in District B emphasizes conversation. If it turns out that DESE-created or approved tests focus on grammar, District B will need to change its first-year Spanish course in order to receive the moneys it needs to operate. Moreover, if a teacher in District B continues to emphasize conversation over grammar, that teacher could lose his or her job.

Because this example is only one of literally hundreds that could have been given, I am convinced that those editorials and letters to the editor urging us to vote against Amendment 3 are indeed valid. We simply must vote against that amendment.