Feds Questioning State and Local Teacher Evaluation Agreements
Hello everyone,
I am working for Montgomery County in MD now and as you know we have a long standing well regarding PAR and Professional Growth System. MD took an AYP waiver which meant evaluation and high stakes employment decisions had to have a component based on student tests. Here, we have an agreement to be an exception to that with our Governor and MD DOE. It allows us to incorporate Student Learning Outcomes- SLO as a portion of our narrative not in the percentage calculation of effectiveness. This allows teachers to actually craft SLO with student growth in mind and not be worried about trying to game the system - instead staying focused on reflecting what worked and what did not with their instructional choices. Reflective practice. However, we hear that USED is pressuring for inclusion of our SLO as a number. The integrity of our union led, teacher developed evaluation system could be compromised seriously by this federal pressure. I know a number of states must be going through this - are any of your legal departments determining if the feds are overstepping in local education by doing this? Also, what organizing narratives are you using to engage members around over testing and draconian evaluation systems?
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Hi Ellen,
Missouri's waiver application does not assign a weight to measures of student learning. During the approval process, the U.S. DOE had several conversations with our state department of education to pressure them to include a weight, but they resisted and the waiver was approved without a weight. We had held several face to face meetings with our state department around the issue of how unreliable state tests are for evaluating teachers, and the many problems experienced around the country with high-stakes tests, and kept them supplied with current articles supporting that, such as the Kappen article by Linda Darling-Hammond and others. I would say that if MD's waiver is approved with the language for Montgomery County, just hold firm and be ready with specific examples of why weights should not be used, and keep trying to educate the education department, which is staffed mostly with people who have never taught. They are following a political agenda, in my view.
Ellen,
The Texas waiver has not been approved and teacher evaluation is a sticking point with USDOE. We successfully fought back an attempt to to link students' test score to teacher evaluation and the current system we use-PDAS-has been in place since the mid '90s. I would imagine, like most states, the requirements for teacher evaluation stem from state statute and in our instance, our legislature doesn't meet again until 2015. We do have a lot of commissions looking at ways to "modify" our evaluation instrument but everything is sort of on hold given the the pending waiver from USDOE. Also, teacher evaluation is not the only sticking point.
Hello -
AK's waiver was approved. Included with it was revamped teacher eval regs. They include the use of student data. 20% yr 1, 35% yr 2, 50% yr 3. The dept of early ed and development (DEED) has hung it's hat on Marzano and Danielson despite both models strongly advocating against the use of student test data.
We have only just begun - we envision that there will be lawsuits due to termination based on the new regulations - they can be interpreted so many different ways that we are sure they will be nighmare to implement, but we are sure that will not stop districts from using it for evil intent :>)
Hi, Ellen; 95% of OK school districts (there's 534 of them, so that's quite a number) are utilizing the Tulsa Model to comply with the requirements of the Teacher-Leadership Evaluation System (TLE), which requires 50% of a teacher's evaluation to come from student assessment (50% quantitative, 50% qualitative). There is now a 2 year delay in implementation of the quantitative portion while the TLE Commission wrangles with non-tested subjects, etc. The TLE commission is now requiring districts to pilot this year and next the gathering of OAMs (Other Academic Measures) for the 15% of student assessment data that can be teacher selected (the other 30% is from state assessment). There's an approved list of OAMs on the TLE website, plus districts who negotiate have some leeway in modifying this list or adding to it (certain OAM guidelines must be met). Right now, districts are utilizing either the Tulsa Model or Marzano's model (Danielson was also approved by the TLE Commission but I don't think any district adopted it) as the qualitative evaluation tool which counts for 100% of a teacher's evaluation. Results are mixed; many evaluating principals in this state are not instructional leaders, which is a significant problem when administering an evaluation instrument which is based 80% on instructional effectiveness. The Tulsa district has used this instrument for four years now and has added value-added as an optional measure, with some degree of acceptance and success.
Regarding testing, OK just pulled out of the PARCC Consortium (SDE decision) and will supposedly be creating our own tests. The OEA has written an NEA grant for organizing around testing, but we have not heard about that as of yet. The grant plan is ambitious and includes surveying our members, site meetings, one-to-ones, external polling, a testing campaign website, lobbying activities, researching testing companies, and coalition building with other groups and parents. We have been very vocal about the myriad problems caused by McGraw Hill's server shut-down during the middle of End of Instruction tests last year which impacted hundreds of districts and students (these are high-stakes tests; kids must pass 4 of 7 of them to graduate highschool).
I hope this information helps! Hope you are doing well, smart lady.