New Race to the Top teacher evaluations with strong reliance on test scores begin in 2014-2015
As expected, House Bill 244 passed both the House and the Senate, incorporating the educator evaluation system piloted by Georgia’s Race to the Top districts into state law. With the Senate vote this week, the bill now moves to the governor, who will sign it into law.As you can tell from reading the bill, there are some vague references to yet-to-be-finalized evaluation details.
The teacher evaluations will now give great weight to student academic growth as measured by testing. Measures of student growth count for at least half an educator’s rating.
Here is the meat of the bill:
No later than the 2014-2015 school year, each local school system and all charter schools shall implement an evaluation system as adopted and defined by the State Board of Education for elementary and secondary school teachers of record, assistant principals, and principals. The
Can parents trust the state with control of their schools?
Many people in DeKalb and other counties are losing faith in the ability of local education leaders to responsibly manage their schools.Can they trust state leaders to govern more responsibly?
That’s a question more Georgia parents may be asking if Gov. Nathan Deal wins greater control over local schools systems. And that, reports the AJC’s Greg Bluestein and Ty Tagami, is Deal’s intent.
In 1989, New Jersey became the first state to take over a school district. Now, the majority of states have some legal mechanism to seize control of a troubled district. But research suggests that state intervention does not always solve problems.
That’s because a state bureaucracy can be even more sluggish and unyielding than a local one. And states don’t always have the money or the staffing to turn around struggling systems.
So, while states may come in and rearrange things, they don’t necessarily dramatically improve them as recent takeovers in Philadelphia and Roosevelt, N.Y., …