Educator Advocacy

Educator Advocacy: Your Voice Makes All the Difference!

By Josh Stephens, PAGE Legislative Policy Analyst

Imagine yourself in the shoes of your General Assembly. By reaching out to legislators. Throughout the course your legislators on a consistent basis of a 40-day legislative session and and partnering with PAGE’s messaging beyond, scores of people contact you about Senate Bill 364 with your personal each day — constituents, other legisla- experiences in the classroom, your voice tors, lobbyists and other advocates — was heard loud and clear. On several about a wide variety of policy issues. occasions throughout the session, Sen. Now, imagine receiving thousands of Lindsey Tippins (R-Marietta), chairemails and phone calls in the course of man of the Senate Education and Youth a week in strong support of a bill that Committee, and Rep. Brooks Coleman would reduce the amount of mandated (R-Duluth), chairman of the House standardized testing throughout the state Education Committee, mentioned the and decrease the emphasis of standard- impact that your calls and emails were ized test scores in teacher and adminis- making on crafting the bill and ensuring trator evaluations. That would, without its advancement through the legislative a doubt, have a huge impact on how you process. vote on that bill. In December, President Barack

That’s exactly what you all — our Obama signed into law the Every members — helped accomplish dur- Student Succeeds Act, the latest iteration ing the 2016 session of the Georgia of federal education legislation. The bill passed both the U.S. House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support from the Georgia congressional delegation with only two dissenting votes in the House. Due to a growing national debate about the proper use for and amount of student testing, Congress listened, and this new law began the process of decreasing emphasis on standardized tests.

Since 2013, when House Bill 244 — the bill creating the TKES and LKES systems used by local districts to evaluate teachers and administrators — was signed into law, PAGE has raised concerns with the amount of standardized testing taking place in the classroom and the over-emphasis of standardized test scores in educator evaluations. For the past three years, PAGE’s top legislative

2016 PAGE and GAEL Day on Capitol Hill

priority has been to reduce the negative impact of an over-reliance on testing. PAGE based this legislative position on trends shown in data collected from our annual education policy surveys of PAGE membership completed by more than 4,000 Georgia educators each year.

As the debate regarding the proper use of student testing intensified, the Georgia Department of Education conducted a survey of more than 53,000 educators to develop a better understanding of why the attrition rate of Georgia teachers is so high and why 44 percent of new teachers leave the classroom by their fifth year. The top reason the respondents gave for the rising attrition rate was the number of state-mandated tests, with the method for evaluating teachers a close second. Based on this information, State School Superintendent Richard Woods gave his full support to comprehensive reform of Georgia’s standardized testing and educator evaluation programs.

Sen. Tippins introduced SB 364 with the intention to do just what Superintendent Woods, PAGE and other stakeholders had requested with increas-

ing urgency. Once a draft of the bill was formally introduced, PAGE sprung into action through the use of email blasts, conversations in schools, PAGE One magazine and our social media channels. PAGE members were asked to contact legislators several times over the course of the legislative session, and you did that and more. We also had a strong showing at the 2016 PAGE/Georgia Association of Educational Leaders Day on Capitol Hill in February, when hundreds of educators met with legislators on the ropes of the House and Senate chambers under the Gold Dome to advocate for SB 364.

We coupled the support of our membership with a unified message from PAGE and every major statewide education organization, including groups representing teachers, administrators, superintendents, school boards and the Georgia Parent Teacher Association. The joint letter of support, signed by all of the education groups, was delivered to House Education Committee members and placed by legislative leaders on the desk of each House member on the day the bill was up for a vote in the House.

As it did on the Senate floor, SB 364 received unanimous approval in the House. It went back to the Senate, which approved the House changes to the bill before sending the legislation to Gov. Nathan Deal for his signature. Advocacy for SB 364 resulted in overwhelming bipartisan support, an unusual outcome in today’s hyper-partisan, contentious political climate.

If you haven’t done so, visit our website at pageinc.org and sign up for our legislative reports and follow us on social media in order to stay up to date on legislative issues throughout the year. By utilizing the voices of our members and other partners, PAGE will continue to proactively work toward reforms supporting high-quality public schools in Georgia, especially with elections later this year and leading into 2017, when education will be a key feature of the legislative session. n