Teacher rating plan progressing
Despite a simmering controversy, Louisiana’s top school board is expected to approve a detailed plan next week that will link many annual teacher evaluations to student test scores starting in 2012.
The change, which stems from a state law pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal, will pave the way for teachers to be rated as highly effective, effective and ineffective.
Fifty percent of the rating will stem from how students fare on standardized tests, and how scores compare with previous years.
The rest will be based largely on formal and informal classroom observations by principals, which has been the key standard for years.
Penny Dastugue, president of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, said that after “some hearty discussion,” she thinks BESE will approve a plan recommended last month by an advisory panel of teachers and others after more than a year of study.
A committee of BESE is set to review the plan on Tuesday. The full board, which faces a major turnover in January, is scheduled to act on Wednesday.
Officials of the state Department of Education said Wednesday that more than 10,000 educators took part in a briefing on the changes, more than 2,600 participated in an online survey on development of the new reviews and that 15,000 teachers have taken part in pilots for the new evaluations.
“We feel completely confident,” said Rayne Martin, deputy superintendent of innovation in the state Department of Education.
“We are ready,” Martin said “We know this is the right thing to do.”
But teacher union officials, who opposed the bill when it went through the Legislature, contend the new rating system is riddled with problems and needs more time and work.
“I do believe they are moving forward with a flawed idea,” said Joyce Haynes, president of the Louisiana Association of Educators, one of the two largest teacher unions in the state.
“I think it is going to be a fiasco,” said Haynes, who was a member of the advisory panel.
Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and another panel member, said major questions remain, especially involving plans to rate teachers on a scale of one to five and knowing that a low score could eventually lead to dismissal.
“If you do it, it has to be right,” Monaghan said. “Otherwise, there is going to be so much noise out there that it is going to fall on its own.”
The new evaluation system is aimed at improving student achievement by ensuring top-flight teachers in all of Louisiana’s roughly 1,300 public schools.
Under previous rules, teachers underwent formal job reviews every three years.
However, critics contend that, since nearly all teachers typically get satisfactory marks, the reviews have little meaning.
Louisiana has about 50,000 classroom teachers.
The bulk of the reviews, starting in the 2012-13 school year, would focus on teachers in grades 4-9 and how their students fared on standardized tests, including LEAP and iLEAP.
That group makes up about 33 percent of public school teachers, officials said.
Pilot projects are planned, starting in January, on how the other 67 percent of teachers will be evaluated, such as those who teach art and music and those who teach kindergarten and first-grade students.
But Monaghan said rating teachers on a 1-5 scale, knowing there is a substantial margin of error, raises questions.
He said teachers, by a narrow and suspect margin, could get an “ineffective” label and be forced into corrective action or, through other suspect calculations, be rated as “highly effective,” which may eventually mean financial rewards.
He said the ratings are tentatively set for:
1.0-1.9, ineffective.
2.0-2.6, effective, emerging.
2.7-3.3, effective, proficient.
3.4-4.0, effective, accomplished.
4.1-5.0, highly effective.
Monaghan said the expectation is that 10 percent of the affected teachers would be rated as ineffective — about 1,700 — and another 10 percent would be listed as “highly effective,” with the other 80 percent considered effective.
State Rep. Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe and chief sponsor of the 2010 law, said that, while the new way of evaluating teachers is a work in progress, it will be ready to go for the 2012-13 school year.
“I want to make sure it is fair to teachers,” he said. “I have said that from day one.”