MCPS Superintendent Questions State Plans on Teacher Evaluation

State Superintendent of Schools, Nancy Grasmick, has submitted proposed regulations to the state Board of Education to mandate a radical redesign of teacher evaluation systems across the state. But the proposal is controversial.

MCPS Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jerry Weast has submitted testimony to the State Board of Education that raises serious questions about the State's plans to link teacher evaluations to student test scores. Some key excerpts are:

"We believe that these regulations could negatively impact MCPS' very successful Teacher Professional Growth System (TPGS), which has been widely hailed as a national model...."

"We understand that the Maryland School Assessment (MSA) outcomes would be a significant component, which causes serious concern. The MSA is not vertically equated across grades, which means it is not designed to show a student's progress from one grade to the next...."

"The findings from a federally-funded study published in July 2010 showed a 26 percent error rate when student test scores are used to determine teacher performance. This means that one quarter of the teachers can be inappropriately identified as either low or high performing; and one quarter of the teachers who are either low or high performing can be overlooked..."

"Requiring at least 50 percent of every teacher's evaluation to be dependent on student growth does not take into consideration positions such as elementary art, music and physical education and a variety of elective courses in secondary schools for which it will be challenging to develop baseline data and growth measures...."

"We believe that that these proposed regulations will result in a return to a "checklist" evaluation system..."

"We do not believe that trying to implement an evaluation system across the state with the guidelines outlined in the proposed regulations will result in improving teaching and learning in Maryland. The proposed evaluation system will not provide the information that is needed to help teachers and administrators improve...."

The question is: is anybody willing to listen? Do the people leading this charge at the Maryland State Department of Education have their minds made up, or re they willing to recognize the real, practical problems being raised by local school administrators who actually do the work of evaluating teachers? Will our political leaders - in the General Assembly and in the Governor's mansion - weigh in to restore a little sanity, or will they stay quiet to avoid the controversy?

Tom Israel, MCEA Executive Director