Are All Schools Mandated to Find 10% of Teachers Ineffective?

Is Superintendent White
really serious about requiring that 10% of public school teachers be
rated as “ineffective”? If so, will this be mandated on a
school-by-school basis or on a school system basis or on a statewide
basis? Comments from some of my readers this week prompted me to
research this issue further. The following is an exact reprint of a
statement in the Act 54 evaluation plan recently submitted by White
to the US Dept. of Education as part of the ESEA Flexibility Request.
Judge for yourself what it means.

“4.
Establishing Measures of Effectiveness: For teachers where value
added data is available, the composite percentile is converted to a
1.0-5.0 scale to use in the teacher’s final evaluation. Teachers
and leaders (school-wide) whose value added, composite percentile
fall within the bottom 10% will receive an ineffective rating.
Teachers in the middle 20-80% range will receive a rating of
effective. The top 10% of teachers will receive a rating of highly
effective.”

Since that plan was submitted, White
has announced that the rating scale will be changed from a 5 level
scale to a 4 level scale. Will that change the 10% factor? This
brings up the following questions that may need to be asked of Supt.
White at the teacher town hall meetings:

1. Would it make sense to apply the
   10% ineffective factor on a school-by-school basis since some
   schools are rated A and some are rated D and F?


2. 
   Since the teachers of non-tested
   subjects and grades will be evaluated using a somewhat different
   system, will the 10% “ineffective” group include only teachers
   of state tested subjects? Or will there be two categories of 10%
   ineffective rankings (one for state tested subjects and grades and
   another for non tested)?
   
   


3. 
   Will the teachers of non tested
   subjects and grades have an advantage since they and their
   principals will set their performance goals for the value added
   portion of their evaluation?
   
   
   


4. 
   Is it true that a formerly tenured
   teacher can now be terminated without a tenure hearing as soon as
   he/she receives an “ineffective” rating using the Act 54
   evaluation? The new law states that a teacher loses tenure as soon
   as he/she gets an “ineffective” evaluation. Once you are
   non-tenured you become an “at will” employee, subject to
   dismissal with only a notice of such by your Superintendent.
   
   


5. 
   Isn't the new tenure hearing
   process really just a mockery of due process since the
   Superintendent and the Principal get to pick 2 out of 3 of the
   hearing officers?
   
   

Since this is a blog and I get to give
my opinion, I want to make the following point:

I think the letter grading system adopted by BESE for
public schools is very misleading and can lead to real dilemmas when it
comes to classifying teachers as “ineffective”, “effective”,
and “highly effective”.



 In the document referred to above, White points out that one-third of Louisiana's public school students are performing below grade level. He then asserts that in the past too many teachers in Louisiana have received satisfactory ratings. In doing so he implies that teachers are primarily responsible for the sub par performance of the students in some schools.



 The Act 54 evaluation system is supposed to determine the
effectiveness of teachers in all types of schools. Consider a comparison of teachers teaching in high poverty schools with teachers
teaching in academically selective magnet schools. Throughout the
state, most high poverty schools and particularly alternative schools
that work with difficult to teach students are rated "D" and "F". At the
same time most selective magnet schools are rated "A". Does it make
sense to expect that a large number of teachers working in alternative or
extremely high poverty schools will get an "ineffective" rating and
that many teachers in  magnet schools will get a "highly effective
rating"? Or is it fairer to decide ahead of time that 10% of the
teachers in all schools should be rated ineffective? No matter what
course our education Czar chooses the end result is highly arbitrary
and potentially unfair. This whole teacher evaluation and school letter grading system stinks!



I urge all teachers who care about their profession to attend the town hall meetings in their areas. I do not believe it is appropriate to limit each school to only 3 teachers allowed to attend. These issues are of great concern to all teachers!