Education reform: Malloy's Staff Reviewing Education Reform Revisions - Courant.com

It might be naive of me, but this sounds very hopeful.

Education reform: Malloy's Staff Reviewing Education Reform Revisions - Courant.com:

Among the changes in the new version of the bill, according to the summary:

Low-performing schools: Eliminates the education commissioner's authority, when reconstituting a low-achieving school, to make it a charter school or place it under the control of a private entity.

Commissioner's network: Requires the commissioner to choose 5 to 25 of the 50 lowest-performing turnaround schools as network schools. Each turnaround school would have a seven-member committee, which would develop a turnaround plan, choosing from a menu of possible models. No private entity, except a private, not-for-profit college or university, could manage or govern the school.

Collective bargaining: Upon approval as a network school, the local school board would be allowed to ask the local union to reopen negotiations to revise the bargaining agreement. If the union agreed, negotiations would be limited to implementing the turnaround plan and relevant salary, hours and other employment conditions. Any issues at impasse would go to an expedited arbitration process.

Teacher evaluations: Requires the commissioner, in consultation with UConn's Neag School of Education, to administer a teacher evaluation pilot program in 10 districts — five using the teacher evaluation framework developed earlier this year and approved by the State Board of Education, and five using a new model to be developed by Neag.

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