(Radio Iowa) – A rally at the Iowa Capitol later this (Monday) morning is one of over a thousand “Workers Over Billionaires” events planned around the country. The head of the country’s largest teachers union will speak at the Des Moines rally. Joshua Brown, president of state teachers union, will, too. He says the 2017 Iowa law that scaled back collective bargaining rights for public sector unions was a set back for the Iowa State Education Association.

“But we’ve been starting to get back to stable and starting to see some growth,” Brown says. “and so we’re looking forward to continuing that growth and making our members excited about some of the things that we can do as a union.” The Iowa State Education Association represents 50-thousand educators — school nurses, counselors and office staff as well as teachers. Brown is concerned about a proposal floated by the governor’s efficiency task force that would tie teacher pay to student performance.

“It’s a scheme that winds up just hurting morale and hurting the ability for educators to trust one another, to work together,” Brown says “because you add that measure of competitiveness, people don’t want to share the best ideas with other people and people want to go to the easiest jobs and try to leave the places where we actually need the best teachers.” Several years ago, former Governor Terry Branstad talked about linking teacher pay to the results of their students’ test scores, but the proposal never became law.

Brown says in areas where the policy has been implemented, high-performing schools continue be high performing, but there isn’t that much of an increase in test scores among students in schools that have had chronically lower graduation rates. “I think the educators on the ground and the parents in our communities as well as the students should all be at a table and working on solutions, but it needs to be funded and there’s been over a decade of funding that hasn’t kept up with inflation in public schools,” Brown says. “If we really want to see improved student achievement, we need to invest in public schools and give educators autonomy and use their expertise to actually make a difference.”

Brown made his comments this weekend during an appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S.