Southern States Rethink teacher Evaluations

This from Morning Education:

The Southern Regional Education Board has identified five states whose legislatures have introduced bills that propose significant changes to teacher evaluation systems: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

While the bills aren't necessarily a direct response to passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the new law is definitely inspiring states to take a second look at their systems, said Andy Baxter and Matt Smith of SREB. State lawmakers are looking to provide districts with more flexibility, they said, and in some cases that means reducing the weight of student growth determined by test scores.

For example, two bills in Georgia would reduce the weight of value-added measures in teacher evaluations - one bill would require that 90 percent of a teacher's evaluation be based on measures other than standardized test scores. Another bill would reduce the student growth component from half to 30 percent. SREB has a bill tracker here. The group also recommends in a new report that student growth "be considered one of multiple sources of evidence of teachers' impact on students learning." More here.