Law ensures best teachers for our kids

Finally, Illinois is getting some attention for something it’s done right.

Gov. Pat Quinn on Monday signed into law sweeping education reforms that get to the heart of who teaches our kids.

During summer break, school districts will figure out how to deal with a world where layoffs are based on ability rather than seniority, where it will be easier to fire tenured teachers who are underperforming.

A good teacher can be a child’s greatest asset and a parent’s greatest investment; a bad teacher can be the child’s greatest detriment.

There clearly are many, many more good teachers than bad. The law will help promote the best of them and push everyone to be better. It should tell those teachers who aren’t giving it their all to get in the game or get out of the way.

With this law, we hope to see the eventual extinction of the teacher who phones it in during those last years before retirement. Where once bright, energetic newcomers would find themselves demoralized and out of work in hard times, they now find themselves on even footing.

The law introduces a healthy dose of competition into what’s been an environment where simple longevity created a warm cocoon of job security, and innovation and passion were treasured by all but the union structure meant to protect teachers’ interests.

In addition to providing for retention based on performance reviews, the law calls for unions to go to mediation before a strike. And a dose of transparency would give taxpayers a chance to see what’s being debated. Both sides would have to publicize their last, best offers.

This was no antagonistic resolution but rather a long, thoughtful, collaborative approach to solving a problem. Unions, advocacy groups, school officials and legislators no doubt wanted to avoid the kind of rancor that accompanied anti-collective bargaining movements in other states.

Nor was it an exclusively Democrat or Republican answer. The measure won nearly unanimous support in both the House and Senate.

“We didn’t do it the way some other states, even in our region, have sought to do, where they exclude people or demonize groups of people,” the Democratic governor said.

Teachers — with their guaranteed pensions — have taken a lot of heat in recent years as private sector pensions disappear, the stock market remains in flux and retirement plans lose corporate kick-ins. The argument over pensions sometimes has devolved into a condemnation of teachers themselves. And that’s wrong.

Now those educators who work every day to make smarter, more well-rounded adults of our kids have a chance to shine like never before.

As does Illinois. One U.S. Department of Education official called the law a collaborative model for other states to follow.