SELECTED RECOMMENDATIONS
• Ensure current and prospective educators are trained in the evaluation system• Link teacher feedback with individualized high-quality professional learning for teachers• Re-engage educators in those districts where teacher evaluation implementation has faltered and where school leaders still don’t see the value of evaluation• Address challenges to current quantitative and qualitative measures of student effectiveness, including offering flexibility in the weighting of student test scoresSource: State Collaborative on Reforming Education
Tennessee’s teacher evaluation system might rely less on student test scores as officials examine ways to improve the system, still in its first year of implementation.
On Monday, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, known as SCORE, released its findings and recommendations from a statewide review of the teacher evaluation program. One of the seven recommendations suggested that the state offer flexibility in how it weights student test scores in evaluations.
Teacher evaluation was a keystone piece of a 2011 legislative reform package meant to improve K-12 education in Tennessee. The new system, which started in the fall, requires more classroom observations and links teacher effectiveness to student tests for the first time.
Half a teacher’s score is derived from qualitative measures such as classroom observations, while the other half stems from quantitative measures such as student tests scores. But about two-thirds of Tennessee’s teachers don’t generate their own scores because they teach untested grades or subjects such as art, physical education or music.