A new bill signed by Gov. Pat Quinn June 13 will change the tenure process and other policies for teachers in Illinois beginning the 2011-2012 school year.

According to the State Journal-Register, Senate Bill 7, also known as S.B. 7, states K-12 teachers have the democratic right to negotiate with their employers over class size, curriculum and other areas of interest to the students’ success. If a school board has to lay off teachers, it will take performance into account as well as seniority. If both candidates are qualified for the job, seniority would be the tie-breaker. School districts are also able to streamline the firing process of teachers. If a teacher acts in bad conduct, they can be fired more quickly even if they have seniority.

Before the bill, a teacher received tenure after four years or was dismissed. Now, a teacher must receive two “proficient” or “excellent” evaluations during the last three years of the four-year period to be granted tenure. If a teacher receives three “excellent” reviews in his or her first three years, he or she would be granted tenure early.

The bill allows teachers outside of Chicago to strike as long as 75 percent of the union votes in favor of it. They also must make their intent and reasons for the strike public for 14 days before it, and the standards to grant tenure and recertification are more strictly related to performance.

“In the past when schools would rehire teachers after layoffs, they had to hire through seniority first,” state Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, said. “If a really good teacher didn’t have seniority, they would lose their job. This bill allows the school to try to hire back the best teachers, so that’s one good thing I think it does.”

Kim Harbison, a senior from St. Louis studying elementary education, said she’s excited seniority isn’t as great of a factor anymore.

“That’s really cool because even in college you see teachers that have seniority and they’re horrible, but they still get to keep their jobs,” Harbison said. “So if you’re able to hire teachers based on performance, that’s better for the students.”

Stefanie Gerfin, a senior from Grayslake studying early childhood education, said she agrees. She said she doesn’t think the new strike regulations are a bad idea, either.

“The union has good intentions, but sometimes I think it can go a bit overboard with strikes,” Gerfin said.

Mary Beth Goff has two children in Carbondale school district 95 and she said while she agrees with the principle of the bill, it might still have some flaws.

“When you’re talking about evaluating teachers based on student performance, you also have to take into account issues of mobility,” Goff said. “I’m not sure this bill does it in a way that’s necessarily spelled out very well.”

Goff said it’s important to take certain things into consideration when evaluating different school districts. She said evaluators need to take into account how many students have moved in and out of the district and at what rate. Also, she said the socio-economic condition of the student could affect his or her performance rather than just the teacher’s effectiveness.

Originally, the education reform groups Stand for Children and Advance Illinois assembled a program called Performance Counts without any input from teachers in Illinois. The proposal took away collective bargaining rights by calling for the elimination of the right to strike for teachers in Illinois and the elimination of seniority as a factor in school personnel decisions.

The groups lobbied heavily for their plan, while Oregon-based Stand for Children donated $610,000 to nine candidates for the Illinois General Assembly in the 2010 election. Teacher association groups in turn took a stand against the program.

“We said, ‘Wait a minute. We’ve had no input on this,’” said Charlie McBarron, spokesperson for the Illinois Education Association. “We know how to give students a better education in Illinois. We put our program on the table, which is Accountability for All. Suddenly the conversation changed.”

McBarron said Stand for Children and Advance Illinois then teamed up with the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois State Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union, Illinois Federation of Teachers and other groups to negotiate the idea of reform. He said after four months of meetings, sometimes lasting up to 12 hours, S.B. 7 was agreed upon. He said it contained some of the ideas that the IEA had long favored.

Matt Vonover, spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Education, said the ISBE was involved with a number of other education stakeholder groups in putting together the bill.

“It’s the culmination of several years of work that’s gone on in a cooperative fashion between school administrators, teachers’ unions, civic groups and reform groups,” Vonover said.

Vonover said the bill has the ISBE’s support. It also has the support of the Chicago Teachers Union, the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, he said.