State Teacher Evals — An Easy ‘a’

“If you are focused on student learning outcomes, it can sometimes mask actual practice,” Bridgeport Interim Schools Superintendent Fran Rabinowitz said. [...] if student performance goes up anyway, the new system can leave the teacher with a higher rating and their job. Put into place as part of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s education reform initiatives in 2012, the new teacher evaluation system has a formula that takes into account student performance, classroom observation and several other factors. The state test changed, however, at the same time it started the new evaluation system, so districts for the time being are allowed to use other sgrowth measures specific to particular student groups. The program is now in its third year, and the state Department of Education had refused to release the annual evaluation results — until this year. Because the Attorney General’s office is currently defending the state against a lawsuit accusing public schools of being drastically underfunded, it included the 2013-14 evaluation data by district and school as one of more than a thousand trial exhibits. What the ratings from the first year of implementation tell us,” said Abbe Smith, a state Department of Education spokeswoman, “is that teachers and principals are engaging in meaningful, professional dialogue and setting goals for how to strengthen the education we deliver to Connecticut students. Late last month, the state’s largest teachers union called for the system to take student test scores out of the teacher evaluation process altogether. In Danbury, School Superintendent Sal Pascarella said test scores shouldn’t be used against teachers but he said the evaluation system — phased in over two years in his district — has provided some valuable information. “Our process of having a really great group of teachers and administrators working together to hammer out the plan has been, in my view, a model of collaboration between teachers and their evaluators,” Title said.