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By Tom Chorneau
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Only half of the early winners among Race to the Top states have fully implemented the required educator evaluations systems – but all of them continue to work out vexing issues including how to maintain the program once federal grant money runs out.
In a report to Congress on the award of nearly $4 billion in RTT funds to 12 states, auditors from the Government Accountability Office found that four states had only progressed to the pilot stage during the 2012-13 school year despite having promised in their original grant application to have the system fully operational by that time.
Concerns continue to be voiced in the field about the ability of principals to consistently conduct classroom observations with significant evidence of some administrators inflating scores or not identifying lower-performing teachers. Perhaps most problematic, however, is that seven out of the 12 recipient district interviewed complained that the grant funds were insufficient to cover the true cost of revising the evaluation systems.
One rural New York district spent about $62,400 on designing and developing its new teacher and principal evaluation system but received just $22,856 in RTT grant monies. The GAO audit noted a 2011 survey conducted by the New York State Council of School Superintendents that found 81 percent of responding administrators were concerned that cost considerations might prevent their districts from soundly implementing new evaluation requirements.
Although the findings did not elicit recommendations, the GAO did note that the challenges Race to the Top states