New Mexico teacher evaluations see change | Albuquerque Journal News

New Mexico teacher evaluations see change | Albuquerque Journal News:

New Mexico teacher evaluations see change

SANTA FE – New Mexico’s Public Education Department will no longer require school districts to use test scores and other data to evaluate roughly 1,000 teachers who teach subjects that don’t use standardized testing – removing one of the most controversial components of the evaluation system.

Also, that data will no longer be used in evaluating first-year teachers even if they are in tested subjects.

SKANDERA: System is more fair for new teachers

Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera said Monday the changes to the evaluation system will make it more fair for new teachers, since the evaluations will be based more heavily on classroom observation and teacher attendance, and will no longer be tied to student performance measures from a previous year.

For veteran teachers in subjects and grade levels without standardized tests – music teachers would be one example – school districts will have the option of using primarily classroom observation and attendance to evaluate them.

School districts would be allowed to choose whether to keep using the backup measures, such as improvement of some student test scores, or scrap them altogether. But if they do continue to use those measures, they can make up no more than 25 percent of a teacher’s evaluation, rather than the 50 percent now.

The changes were made in response to feedback received by the agency in recent months, Skandera said. Skandera said they were presented to statewide superintendents last week and got a largely positive reaction.

“We feel like we’ve been very responsive,” she told the Journal . “We want to make sure we have the fairest, most objective system for evaluating teachers.”

At a glanceThe changes to New Mexico’s teacher evaluation system criteria will affect thousands of teachers. Here’s a brief description:

• For nearly 1,800 first-year teachers, evaluations will be based on classroom observations, their attendance record and other types of feedback. Student achievement from the previous year will no longer be part of the rating.
• For about 1,000 educators who teach classes or grade levels that do not have standardized student tests, it will be up to local school districts to decide whether student achievement measures should be kept as part of their evaluation. But such criteria will be capped at 25 percent, not the 50 percent figure that was used last year.
• For teachers who teach classes that do have standardized testing, the evaluations will not be changed. Student test scores will continue to make up 50 percent of their evaluations.

The controversial teacher evaluations – released for the first time in 2014 and for a second round in May – have been blasted by some for rating teachers based in part on students they have never taught.

Ellen Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, a teachers union that has filed a lawsuit over the evaluation system, said the changes might address that problem, but will make the rating system more uneven overall.

“I think what this represents is a small concession,” Bernstein said in a Monday interview. “But I think the system is so deeply flawed … that it doesn’t help the vast majority of teachers.”

Retroactive for new teachers

Under New Mexico’s teacher evaluation system, test scores typically carry the most weight, accounting for 50 percent of a teacher’s rating. The other 50 percent primarily consists of observation by principals, teacher attendance and students surveys.

For teachers who do not have student test data, either because they are new to the job or teach subjects or grades that don’t have student tests, school districts were told last year to come up with an alternate assessment instead that accounted for 50 percent. For instance, Albuquerque Public Schools chose to use the academic growth of the 25 percent of lowest-performing students in a school as the backup measure for teachers.

Under the changes announced Monday, that backup measure will no longer be used in evaluating new teachers.

But APS could choose to use it for those teaching non-tested courses. However, it could only use it at the lower 25 percent level or less, or abandon it entirely in favor of more heavily weighted observation and attendance criteria.

For the 1,876 new teachers in the 2014-15 school year – out of roughly 23,000 total teachers statewide – the revised evaluation formula is being used to recalculate evaluations from last year’s school year. The change will also be applied moving forward.

Most of the 1,876 teachers will not see a change in their rating from last year due to the new criteria. Only 197 of the 1,876 new teachers will have a change in their designation – with 166 of those New Mexico teacher evaluations see change | Albuquerque Journal News: