Alabama’s “New” Accountability System: Part II
In a prior post, about whether the state of “Alabama is the New, New Mexico,” I wrote about a draft bill in Alabama to be called the Rewarding Advancement in Instruction and Student Excellence (RAISE) Act of 2016. This has since been renamed the Preparing and Rewarding Educational Professionals (PREP) Bill (to be Act) of 2016. The bill was introduced by its sponsoring Republican Senator Marsh last Tuesday, and its public hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. I review the bill below, and attach it here for others who are interested in reading it in full.
First, the bill is to “provide a procedure for observing and evaluating teachers, principals, and assistant principals on performance and student achievement…[using student growth]…to isolate the effect and impact of a teacher on student learning, controlling for pre-existing characteristics of a student including, but not limited to, prior achievement.” Student growth is still one of the bill’s key components, with growth set at a 25% weight, and this is still written into this bill regardless of the fact that the new federal Elementary Student Success Act (ESSA) no longer requires teacher-level growth as a component of states’ educational reform legislation. In other words, states are no longer required to do this, but apparently the state/Senator Marsh still wants to move forward in this regard, regardless (and regardless of the research evidence). The student growth model is to be selected by October 1, 2016. On this my offer (as per my prior post) still stands. I would be more than happy to help the state negotiate this contract, pro bono, and much more wisely than so many other states and districts have negotiated similar contracts thus far (e.g., without asking for empirical evidence as a continuous contractual deliverable).
Second, and related, nothing is written about the ongoing research and evaluation of the state system, that is absolutely necessary in order to ensure the system is working as Alabama’s “New” Accountability System: Part II | VAMboozled!: