Amendment 3 draws heavy opposition

Support vanishes for teacher rules, but educators still concerned

Although the campaign that placed Amendment 3 on Tuesday's ballot has dissolved, opponents are still working furiously this fall to defeat the measure, which - if passed - would prohibit tenure and tie teachers' salaries to students' performance.

With only a few days left before the Nov. 4 election, the reasons for the campaign's dissolution remain unknown.

Despite raising more than $1.8 million and collecting 275,900 signatures to put Amendment 3 on the ballot, the TeachGreat.org campaign ended - not suspended - its campaign in early September.

Amendment 3

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Two prominent Jefferson City attorneys - Marc Ellinger and Stephanie Bell with Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch on High Street - were critical to raising the money, organizing the collection of the signatures, and arguing in the Cole County Circuit Court to get the measure on the ballot.

Ellinger is listed with the Missouri Secretary of State's Office as the proponent who submitted the amendment for voter approval. Bell is listed, on Missouri Ethics Commission's campaign disclosure forms, as deputy treasurer of the TeachGreat.org.

The committee's mailing address - 308 E. High St. - is the same as the BB&D law office.

Although the firm's website touts that Ellinger "serves as statewide spokesperson for the multi-million dollar campaign" and has "successfully achieved each and every milestone to the November ballot," both attorneys have declined to answer questions about the campaign and its dissolution.

Calls were placed to both Ellinger and Bell twice, but were not returned. Instead, Ellinger directed queries to Kate Casas, spokesperson for TeachGreat, who returned calls, but also declined to answer questions.

"We're still not doing interviews about the amendment because there's no campaign," Casas said.

In a press release, Casas said: "It has become clear that now is not the time to further pursue the Teach Great initiative. While we still believe in this measure wholeheartedly and will continue to work to reward and protect good teachers, support struggling teachers and make it easier for schools to hire more great teachers, we will not be moving forward with Amendment 3 this year."

While there may no longer be an active campaign supporting the measure, voters will still be asked to decide if they want to change the Constitution.

And that worries opponents.

For David Ganey, a Jefferson City High School science teacher, working the phone banks has become a biweekly ritual.

"It's going to take away local control and put it into the hands of individuals who don't understand our community or our schools and who may not be up to date on relevant content," he said.

Ganey believes, if the amendment passes, the emphasis on standardized testing will only grow. Missouri already faces complex political entanglements as leaders attempt to decide if they want to keep, change or jettison the Common Core State Standards, he added.

"You're changing the Constitution to evaluate teachers based on standardized test scores for content that hasn't been decided and, in some cases, for tests that haven't even been written," Ganey said. "The estimated costs of generating those standardized tests is more than $1 billion."

And he asked: What do districts do for courses that don't have correlating standardized exams?

"Those take time and money to develop," he said.

The ballot language notes that "significant potential costs may be incurred by the state and/or the districts" if new tests must be developed to satisfy the proposal's requirements. But the Secretary of State's website also states Amendment 3 will have "no impact on taxes."

Ganey believes the latter concept is misleading. He thinks schools will be held accountable for creating those exams, causing money to be siphoned away from students.

"From a teacher's perspective, I'm afraid I'm going to lose that personal connection with my students," he said. "When the pressure gets put on (us), we're going to lose our ability to personalize instruction. Instead of teaching them how to think or how to be good problem-solvers, we'll be teaching them how to perform well on a test. I didn't get into this profession to teach students how to fill in a box. I want to teach them how to think outside the box."

And Ganey is concerned that the public misunderstands the concept of tenure.

"All tenure really means, for a teacher, is a series of steps have be followed to remove a person from their job. If you are a bad teacher, you can lose your job. Administrators just have to follow the procedure," he argued.

"I think it's important for teachers to have some protections," he added. "People try to frame Amendment 3 as an issue dealing with teacher tenure, but it is more of an issue of ... retaining local control of our public schools."

He also pointed out, if Amendment 3 passes, a new state system for evaluating educators will be jettisoned before it even launches.

Ganey noted every major education organization - from the Missouri Association of School Administrators to the Missouri Parent-Teacher Organization to the Missouri National Education Association - is opposed to Amendment 3's passage.

"We have lots of volunteers working from a grassroots perspective to get the word out," he said. "But it's not like we're well funded. It's not like we have a lot of time. But our folks are energized and really standing up for Missouri children."

The primary opposition group - Committee in Support of Public Education - has raised $2.3 million and spent $1.4 million to defeat Amendment 3, as of Oct. 27.

TeachGreat.org has raised $1.8 million and spent $1.5 million, as of Oct. 15.

Still, Ganey fears that people will not be well informed as they head to the polls.

"We're finding that most people don't know what Amendment 3 is all about," he said. "It's confusing. And they don't know what a "no' vote or a "yes' vote really means. It's ironic ... my job is to teach students and now I find myself educating the public."

Why TeachGreat.Org's supporters ended their campaign perplexes many people.

"Only TeachGreat can answer why they ended the campaign," wrote Otto Fajen, MNEA legislative director, in an email. "We suspect it wasn't polling particularly well, and those of us actually involved in the work of public education are united with one voice in opposition, so maybe it wasn't promising in terms of the prospects of passage."

Fajen said the Coalition to Protect Our Local Schools, which he's working with, is continuing its campaign efforts and is now airing television ads.

"Our campaign seems to be going well, though the measure is very, very bad and thus not to be taken lightly or allowed to pass by a sort of accident," Fajen said.

Robyn Behen, a science teacher at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, said it's possible TeachGreat retracted their campaign because they failed to consider most Missourians prefer local control of schools.

"They overstepped," she suggested. "They misunderstood how we feel about local control."

She said solutions that work in Jefferson City may not be good approaches in St. Louis or Tuscumbia. And, if the amendment passes, she warned that control will pass to non-educators and others who may not have a personal investment in a community's school system.

"People may not understand the long-range implications. A Constitutional amendment offers quite a lot of permanency," she said.