The Governator did it in California.
And Tennessee's chief executive, too.
Now Nebraska is falling in line.
States eager to tap the $4.3 billion Race to the Top Fund are committing to a proposal that seems so obvious, you might wonder why it has taken federal action to make it happen.
But will it work?
Nebraska teachers would be evaluated annually, not just on how well they teach but also on how well their students learn from year to year.
For the first time, the Nebraska Department of Education is laying plans to require school districts to evaluate teachers and principals primarily on student achievement.
More than 50 percent of a teacher's scoring would be tied to achievement. Principals could use the evaluations in promotion and firing decisions.
The change is part of a sweeping transformation Nebraska officials outlined in their $123 million Race to the Top Fund grant application. Even if they aren't awarded a grant, they say they will pursue the change — though without the federal dollars, it could take longer.
The state hopes to have all 218 districts that signed onto the application in compliance by the end of the 2013-14 school year. Other districts would be encouraged to use the new system.
Education officials point to slipping Nebraska scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress exam relative to other states. Until 2005, Nebraska's fourth-graders always scored above the national average in mathematics. Now they score at the national average.
Roger Breed, state education commissioner, signed Nebraska's application, along with Gov. Dave Heineman and Nebraska Board of Education President Kandy Imes.
Nebraska State Education Association President Jess Wolf, who signed a letter of support for the application, said the evaluation proposal will be “a tough topic with some of our members.”
Learning can depend on a variety of factors, everything from student attendance, parental involvement and per-student spending — factors that can be out of a teacher's control.
Judy Jeffrey, director of the Iowa Department of Education, said her state is not proposing such an aggressive approach to evaluations because Iowa educators don't believe their systems for assessing student learning are fair and equitable in how they are applied to all teachers.
“We don't test all grades,” Jeffrey said. “We don't even have test scores on all students at all grades in all subjects for all teachers.”
Doreen Jankovich, president of the Omaha Education Association, said her union supported Nebraska's application to ensure that Omaha Public Schools teachers get “a seat at the table” as the idea is developed.
Breed said the first step is writing statewide performance standards for teachers and principals.
“We've never written on paper that this is what good teaching, good principaling, means in Nebraska,” he said.
President Barack Obama established the Race to the Top Fund to entice the nation's schools to enact his education reform agenda: adopting high academic standards and quality assessments, developing data systems to measure student growth, recruiting and rewarding good teachers and principals, and turning around low-performing schools.
Holding teachers accountable for the academic growth of every student — regardless of whether a child is struggling, high achieving or in the middle — could address a weakness of the No Child Left Behind Law.
Critics say the law, by taking snapshots of achievement at certain grades, inadvertently caused teachers to “teach to the middle,” because schools had the best chance of lifting up the slightly below-average student to minimum benchmarks.
Measuring growth could give a more accurate measure of teacher effectiveness, regardless of a student's family income or level of ability when he or she walked through the door.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has backed factoring student achievement into teacher evaluations, saying state laws that prohibit it are “illogical and indefensible.” States applying for the federal money must indicate whether they have such a law.
Last fall, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation eliminating his state's prohibition on linking student and teacher data. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed a law last month allowing the same.
Nebraska has no law that either authorizes or prohibits tying teacher evaluations to student achievement, said Scott Swisher, deputy commissioner of the Nebraska Department of Education.
School districts devise their own teacher evaluations based on minimum state requirements. The result is 253 systems, said Jay Sears of the Nebraska State Education Association.
“Some of them are as simple as a checklist of ‘Did you communicate with parents?' ‘Do you fill in the grade cards?' Nothing that really has to do with the real act of teaching and learning,” Sears said.
Districts must evaluate new teachers at least once a semester in their first three years. The district must suggest ways to help the teacher overcome any deficiencies. The state leaves it to districts to decide how often they will evaluate teachers after the three-year period. The Omaha Public Schools perform a formal appraisal every three years.
School boards can, under state law, remove teachers and administrators for “incompetency,” which under the law includes “demonstrated deficiencies or shortcomings in knowledge of subject matter or teaching or administrative skills.”
State officials proposed new evaluations based on an OPS appraisal system. It grades teachers “unsatisfactory,” “basic,” “proficient” or “distinguished” in 56 traits that cover planning, preparation, leadership and more. The state would add student achievement as a factor.
For elementary school teachers, achievement on state reading and math assessments would be used, with science added once there is a statewide test. The state would establish a base line and expect one year's growth for a year of instruction.
For teachers of subjects outside those core academic areas — such as art, where a clear link between teachers and student performance on statewide assessments is not possible — achievement would be measured by tests comparing students to peers, and other information such as daily work and classroom-based assessments.
Growth would also become a factor in principal evaluations, which would also take into account leadership, management, ethics and integrity.
The Bellevue school district was not among the 218 (out of 253) Nebraska school districts that signed onto the federal application. Superintendent John Deegan wrote state officials expressing support for the Race to the Top goals but concern about the teacher evaluation plan, including the possibility the system could evolve into a merit pay system teachers have resisted for years.
Papillion-La Vista Superintendent Rick Black has raised concerns that districts may have to tap local property taxes to pay increased costs of collecting student and teacher data. The grant would help pay for those upgrades at the state level.
Millard Education Association President Molly Erickson doesn't expect a big change in how Millard teachers teach under a new evaluation system.
“In our evaluation system we're not being held accountable (for achievement), but in our classrooms we're constantly evaluating, and we're constantly making sure that kids are achieving through lots of different mechanisms, whether they be teacher-created or district standards or state standards,” she said.
Contact the writer:
444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com
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