Indiana releases new educator evaluations

EVSC is not in the report because the district’s current collective bargaining agreement was settled before July 1, 2011, when the new reporting requirements took effect. EVSC and the Evansville Teachers Association are preparing to enter into a new contract. Through the contract, the district will launch a new evaluation system and begin reporting effectiveness data to the state next school year.

Across the state, 26 percent of educators included in the report were rated as highly effective, with the majority of educators 61 percent earning effective marks during the 2012-2013 school year. Just over 2 percent of educators fell into the lower categories of being ineffective or requiring improvement. An educator’s compensation can tie into the outcome of an evaluation. State law bars educators ranked in the two lowest categories from receiving raises.

EVSC Superintendent David Smith said the district worked with the teachers association to develop an evaluation system specific to the school district. In creating the evaluation, the district worked with Mass Insight Education, a non-profit helping EVSC boost achievement at Glenwood Leadership Academy.

“I’m very excited about our new evaluation tool,” Smith said, “and how we can use it for professional growth.”

State law requires school districts to evaluate their certified employees annually and rate them in one of four groups highly effective, effective, improvement necessary or ineffective and provide the information to the Indiana Department of Education. Yet, school districts have the ability to choose their evaluation plan among several established models, or develop their own, and those plans can factor in student data such as performance on standardized test scores differently.

That means the standards used to determine “highly effective” in one district can differ in another.

For EVSC, student standardized test scores are just one element that will factor into the new evaluation, according to Smith, as he explained some EVSC teachers teach grade levels where students take “high stakes” testing but that’s not the case for the majority of the district’s teachers. Because of the differences, the district will use a variety of student data in the evaluation. Other areas where educators will be reviewed include how they present instructional content, manage student behavior and collaborate with their colleagues.

Among other Southwestern Indiana schools, Warrick County School Corp. saw 98 percent of educators ranked as either highly effective or effective, with no educators marked as ineffective. More than 90 percent of educators in the MSD of North Posey County and MSD of Mount Vernon received highly effective or effective rankings, with one Mount Vernon educator marked as ineffective.

The data is receiving critique from a leading Indiana lawmaker on education issues, Rep. Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis. Behning, who chairs the Indiana House Education Committee, said the state may need to more clearly define the evaluation process or “develop a more succinct model that everyone follows.”

“It’s just a little hard to fathom how an overwhelming number of our teachers are effective or highly effective and almost no one falls below that,” Behning said.

Several superintendents have told Behning that a number of low-performing teachers decided to quit before the new evaluation rules came into effect.

“We had hoped by allowing it to be a local choice, if you were a school (district) that had a failing school that no way you would say a majority of teachers” were highly effective or effective, Behning said. “Those two things don’t correlate together.”

The number of “highly effective” educators is greatest in schools receiving “A” accountability grades at 31.8 percent and is the lowest in F-graded schools at 11 percent. Schools receiving failing marks also have the highest number of educators falling into the improvement necessary category, according to the data.

The Indiana State Teachers Association is pleased with the data, said John O’Neal, a policy and research coordinator for the organization.

“I think that it shows contrary to what some people have thought teachers are actually performing at a very high level,” O’Neal said. “I think the data is very clear on that.”

O’Neal said any evaluation model school districts choose to use has to comply with state law, meaning they were all “very rigorous.”

In all, 55,000 educators, including teachers, counselors, administrators and other licensed employees, are reflected in the report. For the 2012-2013 school year, traditional public school districts were required to report their evaluation data. However, for this school year, charter schools will have to report the outcomes of their educator evaluations as well. Private schools, even if they accept state-funded vouchers, are not covered under the reporting requirements.

About 10 percent of educators are marked as not evaluated. The non-evaluated educators could have retired mid-year or left on a medical leave and not received a final score.

The IDOE also doesn’t provide the data on an educator level, meaning parents can’t access the individual rating of their child’s classroom teacher, counselor or administrator. However, state law bars a student from being instructed for two consecutive years by teachers ranked as ineffective. If a district can’t comply with the state law, parent notification is required at the beginning of the second consecutive year.

In a briefing last week, Department of Education staff declined to discuss the merits of the state’s educator rankings, saying Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz could make a comment this week. The new requirements were part of a series of education reforms initiated by former Republican Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett. Ritz, a Democrat, off-seated Bennett and ran for the office on a pro-educator platform.

The state on Monday also released performance data for educators graduating from teacher preparation programs with one to three years of experience in the field. The majority of University of Southern Indiana and Oakland City University graduates were ranked as highly effective or effective. University of Evansville had less than 10 educators, so the data wasn’t reported by the state.