It headlined throughout the legislative session as House Bill 1234. Now it’s called Referred Law 16 and sits on the ballot in front of South Dakota voters. The measure puts together five varied elements of education reform to implement in the state. Advocates for and against Referred 16 say they’re working for what’s best for South Dakota’s schools.
After education funding cuts in 2011, K-12 educators paid close attention to Governor Dennis Daugaard’s State of the State Address in January. What they heard was a change from slashing budgets to promoting ideas that aim to best serve students and teachers.
"So I’m proposing two bonus programs: a $5000 bonus for the top 20 percent of teachers and a $3500 bonus for math and science teachers," Daugaard says.
The law morphed from the Governor’s original proposal as the legislative session ensued. Teachers and administrators took sides. Harrisburg’s superintendent Jim Holbeck spoke vehemently against the measure.
"I will tell you 105 legislators, the Governor, the Governor’s Chief of Staff, Tony Venhuizen, Secretary of Ed have not walked my halls to see what’s going on in my school. They’re telling me it’s broken. They tell me that it needs to be fixed, but my parents aren’t telling me that," Holbeck says.
Despite opposition from major education groups – including the SDEA, the Associated School Boards of South Dakota and the School Administrators of South Dakota, HB 1234 passed through both chambers of the legislature. Governor Daugaard approved the final version, which includes five main tenets.
First, it establishes a scholarship program for college students who teach in one of South Dakota’s critical need areas. State Senator Deb Peters told fellow lawmakers the change recognizes different schools have different teacher needs.
“A lot of the discussion we’ve heard is the previous bills addressed trying to give money to new teachers and get them into math and science focus. We heard from a lot of folks around the state that math and science isn’t necessarily the only need in the state, and we also were told that the plan was too rich. There was too much money thrown in," Peters says.
The critical needs scholarship program can fund grants for up to one hundred college students.
Still focusing on science and technology, the referred law also creates a program of state-funded bonuses for math and science teachers.
Arguably the most controversial aspect of Referred Law 16 is the Top Teachers bonus program. The measure allows state-funded bonuses – based on performance – for up to 20 percent of each school district’s teachers. Or a school board can create its own program for teacher bonuses as long as the state approves. Schools also have the option to completely opt out of the merit pay money. Proponents like state House Majority Leader David Lust championed the bonus structure during the session.
"We know as a society that that is where our culture is going - technology and math and engineering based areas - we need to be responsive to that. And we as a country are falling behind in that battle and to the degree that incentivizing or providing extra compensation for those areas will draw more people into those areas I think that's a wonderful prospect," Lust says.
Opponents to the measure say applying free market principles in schools limits teacher collaboration. Susan Turnipseed is a fourth grade teacher. She told lawmakers that the measure pits teachers against one another.
"Working together as a staff, we’ve studied project-based learning, service learning, visual thinking strategies, bullying prevention and now we’re working hard to learn about the common core," Turnipseed says. "Rewarding just a small percentage of us with merit pay as is proposed in House Bill 12-34 is going to work against everything that we’ve worked so hard to create."
The referred law additionally mandates a statewide system for evaluating teachers and principals. The Department of Education says that involves more analysis than examining test scores alone. Referred Law 16 also eliminates mandatory continuing contracts for teachers who haven’t achieved that four years from now. That was one of Governor Daugaard’s original proposals when he first pitched education reform.
"Many of our teachers go the extra mile, but most of them are still paid based on how long they work there, or whether they have a master’s degree or not," Daugaard says.
Education organizations in the state, most forcefully the South Dakota Education Association, set out to stop the law from taking effect and first let all South Dakotans consider the reform. They collected enough signatures across the state to turn the new education mandates into Referred Law 16.
All five elements of the reform, from teacher bonus programs to providing incentives for future educators to evaluating schools, are all wrapped up in this one vote. South Dakotans now hold the power to choose whether the sweeping measure is what’s best for the state’s children and schools.
