It is clear that educators are taking the new evaluation regulations seriously and are working hard to implement a more thorough, educator-driven system. This is a significant improvement from past practice, when too often formal evaluations were perfunctory, superficial, unsupported or not done at all.
Today’s results from 213 Race to the Top districts are consistent with what we have known all along: The vast majority of educators in this state are performing at high levels. We urge districts to provide needed professional development and support to any educators who received less than a “Proficient” rating.
The purpose of this new system is to help identify educators’ strengths and weaknesses to improve teaching and learning in our schools. We strongly advise the media and the public not to draw conclusions about relative school quality based on the distribution of evaluation ratings from one school or one district to the next. That would be a misuse of these results. As the Educator Evaluation Data Advisory Task Force noted, “The distribution of ratings in a district or school may reflect workforce composition, local priorities or other issues and should be considered with that perspective.”
Just as some teachers are harder graders than others, it is inevitable that some administrators will reach different conclusions than other administrators would based on the local context and their own professional judgment. Any rank ordering of schools or districts based on these evaluation results would be inappropriate and misleading to parents and policymakers and would be a disservice to students and the educators who teach them.
We look forward to continuing to work with our local associations to implement local evaluation systems that are fair and effective at improving teaching and learning in our schools – schools that continue to be the highest performing in the country and among the best in the world.
Click here for DESE press release and school and district results.
2 comments:
It's here! Even the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts will not be spared from the destruction of our public schools and staff. The Deformers are winning...we must expose them.
Many folks at "the top" have way too much time on their hands. If they were ever in the classroom, they have surely forgotten. What a joke. With all the red tape and data and rigor, no wonder the kids hate school. Time to consider a career change.
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