We've officially entered the brave new world of teacher accountability based largely on student test-score growth: Under protest from some teachers, the Houston board of education last night approved a policy to permit the nonrenewal of contracts for teachers whose students make insufficient academic growth on the state test.
There are a couple of reasons why this is an important story to follow. First, as Ericka Mellon has reported, the district has already identified over 400 teachers whose students have scored far below expectations for several years. Assuming some are ultimately removed, this would become one of the first widespreadhigh-stakes uses of teacher "value added" or "effect" data. Currently, such data are used mainly to determine eligibility for performance-based bonuses (pick any number of cities' programs) or for a career-ladder program (as in Springfield, Mass.), but not for a formal accountability purpose.Aside from Houston, I can think of only two other large-scale examples. The District of Columbia's IMPACT evaluation system, which just debuted in the fall of 2009, uses student-achievement data for anywhere from 5 percent to 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation.