State modifies teacher evaluations

A series of changes to Louisiana’s new method for evaluating public school teachers breezed through the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on Wednesday.

The changes were recommended by state Superintendent of Education John White and won easy approval Tuesday by a committee of BESE.

The modifications will give teachers access to student data at the start of the school year, allow principals to provide some teachers with more detailed reasons for their annual ratings and give teachers access to instructional videos on how top-flight teachers perform in the classroom.

White said after the meeting that all the changes either clarify how the job reviews will work or provide more feedback for educators.

The state is in the midst of an overhaul of how public school teachers are evaluated.

Under the old rules, they were typically reviewed once every one to three years.

Officials said more than 98 percent got satisfactory marks.

Under the new rules, reviews will be done annually and half of the reviews will be linked to the growth of student achievement and half will be based on classroom observations by principals and others.

The overhaul stems from a 2010 law pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Leaders of teacher unions and other critics contend the change is seriously flawed and puts too much reliance on standardized test results.

They also said the latest changes are another sign of the state’s rush to overhaul teacher job reviews.

The state has about 55,000 public school teachers.

White said the latest recommendations stem from meetings with teachers and principals, town hall gatherings and advisory panels.

“Every single change is geared either toward clarity for teachers or more feedback for teachers,” he said.

One of the key changes is aimed at allowing teachers to get more feedback from principals if they are rated as effective, which covers a wide range of scores.

Another section is meant to give more flexibility for teachers in high-performing schools, where yearly academic gains are harder to achieve.

White said the net effect is to give those students more ways to demonstrate academic growth so that teachers are not unfairly penalized.

Comments

1) Comment by Iamhopeful2 - 21/01/2013

The "committee that approved" these changes the Tuesday prior to the BESE meeting was the Superintendents' Advisory Council, a committee of about 25 superintendents and t,he Cairman Mike Faulk. Supt. Faulk announced at the beginning of the meeting that controversial subject matter would be presented and he expected to maintain order. This is a room full of adult professionals now with audience members consisting of state legislators, attorneys, educators etc. when the meeting was winding down and votes had been taken (not a unanimous vote), an attorney in the audience asked the Chair if he would entertain public comment. supt Faulk said quite explicitly, "Absolutely NOT." This is a serious infraction of the state open meetings law. Valuable information and research proving extreme flaws in the research for which COMPASS is based was not allowed to be opened for discussion. Proof of the manipulation and distortion of school performance scores was not allowed to be questioned by the public. All this information had been provided to the committee days before and yet not one superintendent objected to Chairman Faulk's censorship. Not one superintendent stood up for his/her teachers to question this debacle. Not one superintendent corrected the Chairman to call for the legally required public input. Why are the citizens, parents, educators of Louisiana putting up with this police state? I'd there not enough evidence that there is something terribly wrong with the govenor's force fed new Ed policies when so many educators and other stakeholders are being ignored by BESE and White?

2) Comment by WestCoast - 17/01/2013

Its just sad to put all the pressure to teachers and administrators where the problem lies in the hands of the community and the child's family. Let's go back and focus on the basic unit of society, family. If you look into the middle school demographics of high needs school in EBR, you would see a lot of overage students. Save them by providing technical/vocational programs/skills that can provide a job when they decide to drop out. It's not that they are all dropping out, its just being real. Look into the discipline referrals of each school and its academic achievement, there is correlation. Help teachers in discipline so that they won't spend the whole time 'counseling' the child and documenting that they've done it. (Esp they are phasing out school counselors).

3) Comment by Concerned_Parent - 17/01/2013

@jwarren....Exactly. It is very easy to show a video of 1hr of 1 teachers day and say "This is a highly effective teacher". But it is completely different to follow them, and their students, around 24/7 for an entire school year. You won't see a video of a day where that teacher shows up to work sick and is still expected to perform at that same high level. It won't show the 1 hr of class after a fight broke out between 2 or more students. It won't show a student bringing a gun into school. But the message will be sent to teachers that they are expected to perform at this level all day every day b/c someone could pop in to do an evaluation at any given moment. No questions asked. Teaching should be an ever evolving thing. Not a cookie cutter method. What works for the class in these videos may not work the same in another class. It would be like showing a pitching video to a MLB team and saying "This is what we expect from everyone. I don't care that you have pitched another way for 10 years and have won multiple World Series. Our data shows that this works better and you have to do it. If we see you not doing it our way, you will be fired."

4) Comment by Concerned_Parent - 17/01/2013

@WestCoast....I know what teachers are doing. The point I was making is that White is trying to make it look like he is throwing them a bone and softening up to ALLOW them to have more information. The only way he can claim to allow this, is if it wasn't happening before. The only way something can be considered a "change" is if you are doing something different than you were doing before. Look at this wording, "allow principals to provide some teachers with more detailed reasons for their annual ratings". In order for this sentence to make any sense, information would have to have been withheld in the past. And to make a change to "allow principles" would mean their was something in place to "disallow" it. And why is the term "some teachers" used? Would "some teachers" NOT be given detailed reasons for their rating? It's smoke and mirrors.

5) Comment by jwarren - 17/01/2013

These videos will be interesting to see. I wonder if they will include the student who comes in late and cusses out the teacher when the teacher asks the student where he has been. Ah, I bet not. Or will they include the principal telling the teacher she can't write a disciplinary referral on the student because the state is monitoring disciplinary referrals and the school is trying to reduce referrals because the state says they have "too many." I wonder if things like that will be on the videos. Teachers would really like to have models from the state on how to handle those type situations, lol.

6) Comment by Bouncer - 17/01/2013

I think the operative words here are "breezed through." This is just another addle-brained, poorly-thought-out move in the shell game designed to hoodwink the public into thinking that the powers in charge are actually doing something beneficial.

7) Comment by WestCoast - 17/01/2013

Concerned_Parent: Teachers and administrators have been doing all those activities (student data, feedback, etc.) all the time. They usually do that once the data comes in teacher's hands once the state department release the scores. Most teachers already prepare for instruction and assessment during summer time or in- service training. Differentiated Instruction, RTI, technology integration are some of the current strategies implemented to address student needs. Now, if the teachers are already doing what the state department are telling them to do, and some students are still failing, what is still the problem?

8) Comment by Concerned_Parent - 17/01/2013

The more I read, the sicker I get. "One of the key changes is aimed at allowing teachers to get more feedback from principals if they are rated as effective, which covers a wide range of scores." So now he claims he is "allowing" teachers to get more feedback. Why were they not ALLOWED to get feedback before????!!!!!! And he is going to give teachers access to data at the beginning of the school year. Again, why would they not have this before????!!!! More political junk(have to use that word to avoid my comment being pulled) to make him and Jindal seem like they are trying to save the world.

9) Comment by crabby - 17/01/2013

It's the "observations by others" that scare me. The "others" are folks who have been let go (fired) by their previous employers or who don't have the credentials to be in the classrooom themselves (typically getting out of the classroom after putting in a good two years of teaching). This still bodes very badly for Louisiana public education. Although, on the bright side, we're so far down we can't really sink any lower.