All eyes are on the State Senate as House Bill 5871 “An Act Concerning the BEST Program,” is on the Senate Calendar in the wake of positive action by the State House of Representatives on Thursday, April 24.

The Connecticut House of Representatives, by a vote of 147-to-0, passed House Bill 5871 “An Act Concerning the BEST Program.”   This legislation phases out the present Beginning Educator Support and Training Program (BEST) as of June 30, 2009, and replaces it with a Mentor Assistance Program (MAP), effective, July 1, 2009.

The legislation also creates a task force, chaired by the commissioner of education.  The task force is charged with developing standards for the new Mentor Assistance Program and necessary legislation to deal with initial education certificate holders who do a BEST portfolio next school year.

CEA President Phil Apruzzese says, “State legislators and policymakers recognize the importance of teacher mentoring and the positive impact it can have on new teachers and the children they teach.  We believe that this new legislation, when enacted, will be a significant step forward for children, teachers and public education in Connecticut.”

The drumbeat for change in Connecticut’s teacher induction program had gotten louder ever since the session convened in February. Raised Bill 5871 was approved March 18 by the Education Committee, focusing on the initiation of a new task force this summer that would give teachers a key role in redesigning BEST.

The task force would be charged with submitting a plan to the General Assembly by January 1, 2009, that would replace BEST with a mentor assistance program starting with the 2009-10 school year.  According to CEA, the state’s current beginning teacher program is ineffective and must be redesigned because it is critical to improving student achievement.

Raised Bill 5871 sets forth specific components for a new mentoring assistance program and would direct the task force to consider whether or not to make legislative changes that would

·         Reduce the classroom teaching load for mentors
·         Require mentoring for the first two years of beginning teachers’ careers
·         Expand the pool of potential mentors
·         Require the state to fully fund mentoring programs.

“CEA believes that it is not a matter of whether or not we should do these things, but rather how we can ensure that they will happen,” said CEA Executive Director John Yrchik when he testified on the bill during the committee’s public hearing on the bill on March 10.

“The failures of Connecticut’s present system to provide adequate mentor support for beginning teachers suggest that mentoring cannot be done on the fly or after a mentor’s other duties are completed. Without sufficient time and funding, quality mentoring simply will not take place,” he added.

BEST has been in the legislative spotlight since the Program Review & Investigations Committee (PRC) released a report in December calling for a series of sweeping recommendations to change BEST after a comprehensive review of the program this past fall.