[StBernard] 9 of 10 Louisiana teachers are rated effective or highly effective in new evaluations

[Westley Annis]

9 of 10 Louisiana teachers are rated effective or highly effective in new
evaluations
Ted Jackson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Print Sarah Tan, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Sarah Tan, NOLA.com | The
Times-Picayune 
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on September 03, 2013 at 7:25 PM, updated September 03, 2013 at 7:37 PM

Nine of every 10 Louisiana public school teachers were rated effective or
highly effective in the first such evaluation in state history, the
Education Department announced Tuesday. Of 43,000 teachers in 1,400 schools,
4 percent were rated ineffective.

Bossier Parish in northwest Louisiana recorded the largest share of highly
effective teachers, 59 percent. In the New Orleans area, Plaquemines Parish
was No. 1, with 38 percent of its teachers considered highly effective.

The evaluations, based on student performance and principals' observation of
teachers at work during the 2012-13 academic year, are the first issued
under education reform measures advanced by Gov. Bobby Jindal and Education
Superintendent John White. They are being used not only to grade teachers,
schools and school systems but to determine whether individual teachers
receive extra pay. (Read the full report.)

White said the new evaluation process, with teachers given one of four
labels ranging from ineffective to highly effective, improves on the former
two-tier scale. The results, he said, demonstrate that school systems with
the most effective teachers are the ones that show the most student
progress.

"Statewide, higher-achieving districts that made great progress with
students had more teachers that achieved higher levels, while lower
performing districts tended to have lower ratings," White said. "This shows
that educators are using this tool in a way that's consistent with the
progress their students are making."

The former evaluation process labeled teachers either unsatisfactory or
satisfactory. It was based on whether students met a teacher's proposed
learning targets. In 2011-12, 98.5 percent of teachers were considered
satisfactory, a share so high that White's Education Department suggested
the formula was meaningless.

In the new process, teachers receive one of four grades: ineffective,
emerging, effective or highly effective. The grades are based on two
components:

* Observations of each teacher's work by the school principal. For
principals' evaluations, the local school system's superintendent was the
observer.
* Student performance as measured by LEAP and iLEAP scores, or, for students
who don't take those standardized tests, end-of-course exams.

This year, 89 percent of Louisiana teachers were given effective or highly
effective ratings overall.

On the observation component alone, the new report shows wide variations.
New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish had the most stringent standards, with
few teachers ranking highly effective: 17 percent in Orleans, including both
Orleans Parish School Board faculty and Recovery School District teachers,
and 8 percent in St. Bernard.

White concluded that St. Bernard and New Orleans held their teachers to
higher standards. It's a model other parishes should follow, he said.

"You see some examples of even when the evaluation is subjective, they have
a very high bar," White said. "The bar is not as high in some of the other
parishes. ... We'd like to focus on all parishes having a high bar for
observations."

Within New Orleans, teachers in the state-run Recovery School District faced
stricter scrutiny, with many principals observing none of their teachers to
be highly effective. By contrast, many Orleans Parish School Board
principals gave highly effective observation grades to 100 percent of their
teachers.

On the student performance component, St. Bernard Parish showed the
strongest teacher ratings, with 59 percent considered highly effective. The
weakest in the metropolitan area was New Orleans, including both public
school systems, at 36 percent.

The state requires that the observation component count for at least half of
a teacher's overall grade. LEAP test scores part may count for anywhere from
zero to 50 percent, at the discretion of the local school system's
superintendent.

The only exception comes when the LEAP performance of a teacher's students
ranks in the bottom 10 percent of all students statewide. In that case,
student performance automatically makes up 50 percent of the teacher's
overall grade.

The malleability of teacher grades concerns Steve Monaghan, president of the
Louisiana Federation of Teachers. He said the state presented Tuesday's
report as hard data, even though the relative weight of student performance
is largely left up to local superintendents.

"White has tweaked the process to allow a local superintendent in some
undefined manner to contact the Department of Education and request that
that score be adjusted," Monaghan said. "As long as the evaluation system is
in a pliable state where it can be adjusted at the whim of the leadership of
the Department of Education, then it's going to be suspect in what
information it provides. If we know something's being tweaked, I think it
should be presented to the public in that manner."