Competing education plans get a hearing

DES MOINES - The Iowa House will swing open its doors Monday night for teachers, parents, school administrators and others to chime in on the state's sweeping education-reform proposals.

House Democrats, who spent last week working on amendments to the House-approved version of the bill, asked for the forum to begin at 6:30 p.m. As of Friday morning, 67 people had signed up to speak.

“I think it's a chance to make sure that everyone who didn't have a chance to give input now has the opportunity to,” said Rep. Sharon Steckman, D-Mason City, ranking minority member of the House Education Committee and one of the members who asked for the forum.

As it stands now, Monday's speakers can praise or criticize parts of three reform plans:

• A 156-page proposal from Gov. Terry Branstad that's been out since January.
• A House amendment that keeps much of the governor's plan intact but brings the bill down to just more than 100 pages.
• A Senate plan that scraps the governor's plan entirely and replaces it with a 44-page proposal.

There are some common components to all the plans. All, for example, call for the expansion of the Iowa Core to include music and fine arts.

Differences emerge, too. The governor's version includes “character education” as a core subject. The House amendment eliminates that. The Senate version includes it but changes how members of a proposed core curriculum advisory council in the other plans are appointed.

Mary Jane Cobb, executive director of the Iowa Education Association, said the union doesn't have an opinion on which plan works best, or worst, for its members.

“There are parts from each one we like,” she said. “We're going to be talking about the parts that most directly affect the classrooms.”

Mary Gannon, attorney for the Iowa Association of School Boards, said the group also likes some items from each version. For example, the association likes that the governor's plan requires annual teacher reviews. The current law requires reviews only every three years.

She said the association also likes how the Senate plan sets up the annual review process, so that in every three years, two are peer reviews and one is a supervisory review.

“It was just very expensive to go to a system where there was a comprehensive review every year, but we recognize the value of having annual evaluations,” she said.

Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said he expects the Senate plan will be amended on the Senate floor before it moves out of the chamber. Rep. Royd Chambers, R-Sheldon, floor manager of the House bill, said the same is true there.

“The online education piece is likely to change,” Chambers said. “We're still working on the language.”

Neither Quirmbach nor Chambers could say when the bills would be called to the floor in their respective chambers.

“Right now, we're looking at what we can do to make the bill better here,” Quirmbach said. “It's still in the start of the process.”

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