Two bills in the state Senate seek to reduce the influence of student test scores on teacher evaluations. The law now calls for student growth -- as measured by testing -- to count for half of a teacher's annual rating.
Senate Bill 364 comes today from Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, chairman of the Senate Education and Youth Committee. The bill would reduce the weight of student growth scores to 30 percent, which aligns with most other states.
A day earlier, Sen. William T. Ligon, R-Brunswick, introduced a bill that goes even further; Senate Bill 355 reduces the weight of the test scores to 10 percent.
According to the AJC's Ty Tagami:
The current mandate for evaluations, adopted by the General Assembly in 2013, requires student "growth" on tests to count for at least half of each teacher's evaluation.
The Tippins bill is not yet up on the AJC Legislative Navigator or the General Assembly site. It will be posted tomorrow. Here is an excerpt from the Ligon legislation:
(2) The recent federal study by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, which is part of the Institute of Education Sciences of the United States Department of Education, reveals that the value added models are not capable of measuring a teacher's effect on student learning in just one year;
(3) Even over three years, these measures of effectiveness still do not meet the .85 level of reliability traditionally desired in scores used for high-stakes decisions (Haertel, 2013; Wasserman & Bracken, 2003); and (4) The study strongly cautions states that are considering the student growth percentile model for teacher accountability about using the scores for high-stakes decisions.
Here is a response from DOE today on the Tippins bill:
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