A new survey indicates a sizable portion of public school teachers who voted against a proposed six-year contract that would have tied wages to performance did so because they did not feel they had enough information on the deal, not because they disagreed with its terms.
The Castle Foundation, which funded the survey, said the results are heartening and illustrate that teachers support change but also want to understand what they are signing up for, how it will affect them and be assured the system implemented will be fair.
"There’s a big communication job to do," said Mitch D’Olier, president and chief executive officer of the foundation, which gave $10 million to the state Department of Education last year to advance planned reforms and has been a strong supporter of improving public schools.
"Teachers didn’t … want to agree to a (performance) evaluation under a proposal that they didn’t understand," D’Olier said. "I think that’s a reasonable position."
Ward Research interviewed 250 public school teachers from Feb. 20 to March 7 for the survey, which has a margin of error of 6.2 percent.
About 54 percent of teachers surveyed who voted to reject the proposed contract in January said their reason for not supporting it was a lack of information or because they didn’t understand its terms. About one-fifth said the primary reason they voted against it was because of continued 5 percent wage reductions, while 11 percent rejected it because of provisions for evaluations that would take into account student growth.
Among teachers surveyed who voted to approve the contract, 40 percent said they supported the offer because of pay raises that would start in July 2013, and 30 percent said they were satisfied it was the best teachers could get and that it was fair.
Hawaii State Teachers Association Executive Director Al Nagasako called the survey "helpful" and said it validated the union’s polls that showed many members wanted more information about the contract and how the revised evaluations would work.
He said that in a future vote some of that information will have to come from the state Department of Education.
"We’d better find a way for the employer and us to get that message out," he said.
In voting statewide Jan. 19, teachers rejected the proposed contract 2-1. The vote was a big blow to the union, which had recommended ratification, and to the state’s education reform plans.
The contract offer included several elements of Hawaii’s Race to the Top plan, including a transition to a new evaluation system based in part on multiple measures of student growth and to performance-based compensation and tenure rules.
The deal would have continued wage cuts of 5 percent through June 30, 2013. After that, teachers would have been paid under a new salary schedule that recognized years of service but also tied future raises to performance. The plan also called for an evaluation system that took into account student growth. Teachers rated "effective" or "highly effective" would have been eligible for 1 percent step raises annually.
The contract proposal did not spell out how student growth would be measured.
Acceptance of the contract would have gone a long way in helping convince federal authorities that the state can make good on big reform pledges under its $75 million Race to the Top grant. The state’s slower-than-promised pace of reforms since the grant was awarded in 2010 prompted the Obama administration in December to put the grant on high-risk status and warn it could be lost if substantial gains were not made soon.
As it is, U.S. Department of Education reviewers will visit in two weeks to determine whether Hawaii is making progress on its Race to the Top goals, and will likely find a continuing teacher labor dispute, which has been blamed in part for putting the grant at risk.
Teachers have been working under an imposed contract since July, when negotiations fell apart. The union is arguing before the Hawaii Labor Relations Board that the state violated teachers’ rights when it unilaterally implemented the offer.
The state will have to acknowledge little progress on the labor front since the Jan. 19 contract rejection. In late February the HSTA gave the Governor’s Office a proposal to consider. The governor has not issued a response, though one is expected soon.
While the Castle Foundation survey is not expected to make a difference in helping convince federal officials Hawaii can fulfill reform pledges, it could make clearer the reasons why teachers rejected the contract. Many had believed teachers were opposed to a performance management system, but the survey indicates they are not.
State schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said the survey was good news and shows teachers "are welcoming the feedback on their performance" but need to understand how the new system will work and affect them.
"It’s good to know there’s not a strong sentiment against evaluation and feedback," she said. "That leaves us with a bigger understanding of what we need to do moving forward."
The foundation commissioned the survey, at a cost of about $13,000, to better understand the issues that went into why teachers rejected the contract.
While the 250-respondent pool is a small for the 12,500-teacher union, Ward Research President Rebecca Ward said it is representative, especially given that the breakdown of teachers surveyed who voted to approve or reject the contract is nearly identical to the voting results.
In addition to asking teachers to explain their reasons for supporting or opposing the contract, the survey also polled teachers on their understanding of the implications of their vote, their experiences with evaluations and what they need to see in the new evaluations.
The poll found:
» Four in 5 teachers said they were aware, at the time of the ratification vote, that rejecting the contract offer could jeopardize the state’s $75 million Race to the Top grant.
» Seventy-four percent of teachers said their principal has observed them in the classroom at least once this year, and a majority (79 percent) of that group found those visits helpful.
» Ten percent of teachers who were polled said they did not understand the contract proposal "at all," while 84 percent said they understood it "somewhat" or "not very" well.
The survey also found a lack of support among a sizable group of teachers for their union. When asked how HSTA is representing teachers, 53 percent said "not very well" or "not at all," while 46 percent said "somewhat well" or "very well."
Nagasako said those numbers might reflect confusion and frustration on the part of teachers about how the union was communicating with them.
He also said HSTA has relied heavily on social media, which has left a number of teachers out of the discussion.
