JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Supporters of a Missouri proposal to link teachers' job evaluations to student performance called off their campaign Tuesday, acknowledging that the measure wasn't polling as well as they had hoped.
Proposed Constitutional Amendment 3 still will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot, but there will be no campaign to persuade people to vote for it, said Kate Casas, a spokeswoman for the Teach Great organization sponsoring the initiative.
"It has become clear that now is not the time to further pursue the Teach Great initiative," Casas said in a written statement.
Political activist Rex Sinquefield, an investment firm founder with a history of spending millions of dollars on his favorite causes, already had donated nearly $1.7 million to the campaign group that led an initiative petition drive to qualify the measure for the ballot.
As recently as the Labor Day weekend, supporters were still touting their campaign plans for the measure. And on Sept. 2, a Cole County judge rejected a legal challenge to the proposed constitutional amendment.
Casas said supporters would still defend against an appeal of that ruling, but she said a poor showing in public opinion polling led organizers to cancel plans for what had been expected to be a multimillion-dollar campaign for the measure.
"We need a longer runway to educate voters," she said.
The measure has been opposed by teachers' unions and school administrators' groups, who had planned a $2 million campaign against it.
"As long as this remains on the ballot, we will continue to campaign and let voters know this is not the right track to go," said Mike Wood, the government relations director for the Missouri State Teachers Association.
The proposal would end tenure protections for newly hired teachers, who currently qualify for indefinite contracts after working for five years at a public school district. They instead could have contracts of no more than three years.
Starting next July, the measure also would require schools to adopt an evaluation system that relies largely on "quantifiable student performance data" to make decisions about paying and retaining staff.
Public education groups assert that the ballot measure would take away local control from schools by requiring the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to approve their evaluation systems in order to receive taxpayer funding. They contend it could trigger a large increase in standardized testing, which currently occurs only in core subjects in certain grades, in order to provide data for teacher evaluations.
Associated Press writer Summer Ballentine contributed to this report.
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