With lawmakers giving their final approval today, Gov. Bobby Jindal quickly signed into law an overhaul of public school teacher evaluations to include student test scores, with the state highlighting the new approach as part of its next application for federal Race to the Top grants offered by the Obama administration.
House Bill 1033 by Rep. Frank Hoffman, R-West Monroe, is one of Jindal's top legislative priorities. A sharply divided Senate passed the measure 22-17 on Wednesday, and Hoffman this afternoon won a 68-23 vote from his House colleagues adopting the upper chamber's version. Hoffman opted for concurrence rather than delay final passage by sending it to a compromise committee to reconcile the chambers' competing versions.
A delay could have pushed final action past the June 1 deadline for Louisiana's application for the next round of Race to the Top money from the federal government. "Our passage of this will make our application stronger," Hoffman said.
The White House and the U.S. Department of Education has prioritized "value-added" evaluations a part of its public school policy overhauls, and legislatures around the country are considering such measures this year, often to the chagrin of teachers unions.
As it goes to Jindal, the bill calls for a two-year implementation period with up to 27 local systems around the state volunteering during the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years to use the so-called "value-added" evaluations. The value-added component would comprise half of a teacher's annual evaluation. Half would consist of the traditional subjective evaluation now conducted by administrators at least once every three years.
Teachers would not be judged strictly on raw test scores. Rather, local and state authorities would use a range of factors -- students' previous performance, attendance averages, discipline records, socioeconomic makeup of a class -- to set expectations, with teachers judged on whether their students meet the goals over the course of the year. It is unclear exactly how teachers in nonacademic subjects -- music, art, physical education -- will be measured. The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will approve the precise formulas that will be used.
An advisory committee of teachers, administrators, elected officials and others will review the program's effectiveness, forwarding the findings to the House and Senate Education Committees. Those panels would then decide whether to continue and expand the program.
Individual school results would not be public during the trial period. Thereafter, individual campus results would be available by subject area. Individual teacher measures would never be public, a change from the original version of the bill.
Senate Education Chairman Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, won amendments extending the requirements to public charter schools as well, a move that Hoffman and the administration did not oppose.
The Senate also added by a 20-19 an amendment requiring that state Superintendent Paul Pastorek and other state education agency employees making more than $100,000 "be evaluated using the same standards and criteria as teachers and administrators evaluated pursuant to the provisions of this Act."
Hoffman told his House colleagues the addition "strengthens the bill," but he also conceded that he does not know exactly how the state board can structure a "value-added" evaluation for state officials who do not teach students or directly supervise teachers.
Rep. Pat Smith, D-Baton Rouge, said, "That, to me, is fruitless language."
The end product is the result of considerable negotiations among the Jindal administration, Hoffman, Nevers and the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. LFT President Steve Monaghan never withdrew his opposition of the bill, saying "value-added" methodology is still too new to codify. But he helped craft a final version with considerably more protections for teachers than the initial proposal.
The state's other teachers union, the Louisiana Association of Educators, argued vehemently throughout the process against the bill and was not an active participant in any alterations.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Friday, May 28th 2010 at 12:42PM
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