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<h6 class="byline">What Do Teachers Deserve? In Idaho, Referendum
May Offer Answer<br>
</h6>
<h6 class="byline">By <span itemprop="creator" itemscope=""
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"
itemid="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/kirk_johnson/index.html"><a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/kirk_johnson/index.html"
rel="author" title="More Articles by KIRK JOHNSON"><span
itemprop="name">KIRK JOHNSON</span></a></span></h6>
</nyt_byline>
<h6 class="dateline">Published: September 23, 2012 </h6>
BOISE, Idaho — In the struggle to fix the nation’s public schools,
the old red-state, blue-state idea is looking as dated as Dick and
Jane. You can hear the change in the voice of Gov. C. L. Otter, a
Republican here in one of the most deeply conservative corners of
the country, when he expresses a brotherhood bond with Rahm Emanuel,
the Democratic mayor of Chicago and former Obama administration
chief of staff. <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/us/idaho-education-overhaul-is-subject-of-referendum.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/us/idaho-education-overhaul-is-subject-of-referendum.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www</a>
<br>
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<p itemprop="articleBody">
“I could empathize with Rahm and what he was going through,” Mr.
Otter, better known as “Butch,” said about the recently settled
teachers’ strike in Chicago during an interview here in the State
Capitol. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
“It’s not the teachers,” Mr. Otter said, paraphrasing Mr.
Emanuel’s tough-guy script from a news conference at the height of
the standoff. “It’s the union bosses.” </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Chicago’s fight may be over, but in Idaho, where a three-part <a
title="Idaho secretary of state Web site."
href="http://www.sos.idaho.gov/elect/inits/2012refer.htm">proposition</a>
on performance pay, tenure and technology in the classroom is
roaring toward Election Day, the debate over schools has morphed
into a harsh discussion about whom the voters should trust. And as
Mr. Otter’s attack line shows, the political and social battle
lines are blurred — neither predictably conservative nor liberal,
and often tinged with emotion about what schools can and might be.
</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
<a title="South Dakota ballot proposals"
href="http://sdsos.gov/content/html/elections/electvoterpdfs/2012/2012%20BQ%20Pro%20Con%20Pamphlet%20final.pdf">South
Dakota</a> and <a title="Michigan ballot proposals"
href="http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Statewide_Bal_Prop_Status_145801_7.pdf">Michigan</a>
also have questions on their ballots that ask voters to weigh in
on collective bargaining. Voters in California and Arizona will
decide on new or expanded taxes to support their schools. At least
20 state legislatures addressed teacher tenure this year, most of
them shifting power from unions to districts, according to the
National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan group. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
But Idaho’s track through the faculty lounge — closely watched by
labor and education interests around the nation — is still a case
apart in the magnitude of the changes and how they came to be. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
In a mostly rural state where the recession was particularly
brutal in construction and manufacturing, lawmakers carved some of
the deepest cuts in school spending in the nation. Per-pupil
outlays fell 19 percent between the 2008 and 2013 fiscal years —
only Arizona, Alabama and Oklahoma cut more — according to a <a
title="The report"
href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3825">report</a>
by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy research
group focused on low- and moderate-income families. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
In 2011 the Legislature passed, and Mr. Otter signed, a regulatory
overhaul of public education: eliminating tenure and stripping
teachers of most collective bargaining rights, yet promising
hand-held computers for students. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
That created the context that both sides are now fighting over in
television ads and political broadsides. The teachers’ union and
its allies wonder if the state’s regulatory changes were sincerely
aimed at improving schools, or a cynical move — with the recession
as cover story — to eliminate one of the last vestiges of union
life in a fiercely anti-union state. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
The governor and his allies ask if teachers really want the best
for students, or if they are fighting to defend cushy rights in
setting schedules and curriculums that few other workers enjoy. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
The question of whether public employees in general have it too
good in a transformed global economy has echoed in other states,
of course. Last year in Ohio, residents struck down a package of
laws that reduced public employee perks. The recall election in
Wisconsin this year was a public-worker debate by proxy, as Gov.
Scott Walker, a Republican who had pushed through a
rights-reduction package, was reconfirmed. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Here it is all about what happens in the classroom. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
“If you look at polling, union leaders are one of the least
respected when it comes to getting information about education,
but teachers are always at the top,” said Tom Luna, Idaho’s
superintendent of public instruction, who led the overhaul drive
as the publicly elected head of the school system. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Firing back, teachers and their union representatives say the
overhaul, formulated during Idaho’s application for federal funds
in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education incentive
program, was mostly about austerity. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
“He tried to claim there was a need for reform, when in actuality
it was a political answer to our economic conditions,” said Robin
Nettinga, the executive director of the Idaho Education
Association, referring to Mr. Luna. The association, representing
about 13,000 teachers, led a petition drive this year to challenge
the overhaul package and put it on the ballot. Its yard signs urge
voters to strike down “the Luna Laws.” </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Some district administrators say they fear that in their
bloodletting both sides are forgetting the students. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
“We just can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” said Ryan Kerby, the
superintendent of New Plymouth School District, who helped develop
a pay-for-performance bonus system in the overhaul package called
Students Come First. Mr. Kerby noted that Idaho’s high school
graduates have among the lowest rates in the nation for going to
college and staying there, a challenge for the state whatever
happens with the ballot measures. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Teachers working to overturn the package say that curtailed
bargaining rights and the elimination of tenure protection are
tough, but that morale has been hardest hit by accusations that
money and clout across the bargaining table are central
motivators. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
“Nobody becomes a teacher for the money,” said Mandy Simpson, the
president of the Nampa Education Association, who teaches high
school math near Boise. “I could make twice what I do.” </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
But money is, in fact, driving at least part of the debate because
of how Students Come First was structured. About $38 million in
the first round of teachers’ bonuses — an average of about $2,000
per teacher, calculated through test scores and other criteria
developed by districts — is set to be paid later this year, in the
first fiscal year that funds become available. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
That is if Proposition 2, the one focused on merit pay, survives
November’s election. If it is struck down, Mr. Luna said in an
interview, the state will have no legal authority to pay up. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
But if the pay and bargaining system survives the election, some
veteran educators said they thought the strife could get even
worse by forcing teachers to focus all issues and grievances into
pay and benefits, which would be the only things left for the
union to negotiate. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
“Everything is going to come down to pay, so other
dissatisfactions are going to get hooked to that,” said Michael
Steiner, who taught English for four decades in the Idaho public
schools before retiring in 2007. “The fighting might never end.” </p>
<br>
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