Brandi Hassien, a third grade teacher at Bush Elementary School in Fulton, watched as election results came in Tuesday night. She paid close attention to how Missourians were voting on Amendment 3, a proposed amendment that would implement a teacher performance evaluation system. Voters statewide overwhelmingly voted against the amendment.
"It was an amazing feeling. When the final result came in about 9:30 or 10 (election night), it was just a huge sigh of relief," Hassien said.
Most Missourians who showed up at the polls for November's election voted against Amendment 3. Statewide, 76.448 percent voted no while 23.552 percent voted yes, according to the Missouri Secretary of State's Office. In Callaway County, 78.721 percent voted against and 21.279 percent voted for the amendment.
South Callaway Schools Superintendent Kevin Hillman said he is happy voters struck down Amendment 3.
"I do think there is always a need for trying to make ourselves better as schools and educators. But I thought there was a lot of pieces to Amendment 3 that would not provide that," Hillman said.
According to the ballot language, Amendment 3 would have amended the Missouri Constitution to require teachers to be evaluated, dismissed, retained and paid largely based on "quantifiable student performance data" - standardized test scores. It also would have prohibited teachers from organizing or collectively bargaining related to that teacher evaluation system, which had not been thoroughly designed before the amendment was placed on the ballot. The ballot language also stated that the state and school districts could have potentially significant costs associated with developing new evaluation systems.
Hassien said she thinks a lot of people thought teachers were against the amendment because it would have taken away teacher tenure. But, she said teacher dislike of the proposed amendment was more about the standardized testing.
"Tenure helps," Hassien said. "It's hard for us to stand up for our students without tenure, but it was so much about the testing. Because we can only control a small portion of a child's life and to base the majority of an evaluation off of one test is extremely unfair to the child and it's unfair to the teacher."
Hassien worked with the Protect Our Local Schools campaign, which opposed the amendment, for the couple months preceding election day. She worked some phone banks, went door-to-door and helped spread the word on social media. Hassien described the community support to keep teacher evaluation under local control as amazing.
Currently, local school districts decide how teachers are evaluated as well as which teachers go and which teachers stay. Hassien said Amendment 3 treated every school, student and teacher exactly the same - a treatment both Hassien and Hillman said they disagreed with.
"Education is so different than most industries," Hillman said. "It's about people. And with them, every type of person coming from every type of environment with every type of need - so it's always a more complex answer."
Hillman said South Callaway Schools, like every school district, will continue to work toward better evaluating itself and toward further improving the school.
While Missouri voters overwhelmingly voted no on Amendment 3, Hillman described it as a hot topic that he doesn't see going away.
"I fully expect to see some sort of language back into a bill that's talking about that in the future and we will see what that is and where that goes from there," Hillman said.