Indiana these days seems to be awash with educational measurements. Just on Monday, the Indiana Education Roundtable approved new benchmarks for school standards, a development that now goes to the Indiana State Board of Education.
That said, one new education development that continues to be an annoyance is the release of results of the Indiana teacher evaluation law. Granted, it will likely be another year before Indiana has a full measurement of teacher performance, but those overall results raise questions.
And just as a note, the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. was one of those Indiana districts not included in state reporting. That is because a collective bargaining agreement between the EVSC and the Evansville Teachers Association was settled prior to the new evaluation program taking effect. Under terms of the contract, the EVSC will begin a new evaluation system and begin reporting data to the state next school year.
However, of the school systems reporting this year, here’s the rub. Of all of those teachers evaluated this year, some 87 percent were determined to be highly effective or effective.
Just over two percent of educators fell into the lower categories — needing improvement and ineffective. Another 10 percent did not receive a final evaluation, some choosing to leave teaching.
The question many of us are asking is whether 87 percent of all Indiana teachers really are effective or highly effective?
It does seem a stretch.
In our view, the idea should be to reward those teachers who teach at a high level, especially if 87 percent are doing that. Of course, we are not convinced they are.