Practice lags policy in school reform

When lawmakers and Gov. Brian Sandoval touted a package of education overhauls two years ago that were set to change the face of education in Nevada, they expected the key piece of the project — a high-stakes teacher evaluation — to be ready to go this year.

Fast forward to 2013. While many working the project say things are going swimmingly, tying student test scores to evaluations that could decide which teachers get promoted and which get the boot is going to take longer than expected.

“The Legislature believed that the model could be built in four meetings. That seems laughable now,” said Rorie Fitzpatrick, deputy state superintendent . “The Legislature didn’t know what they were asking.”

The Nevada Teachers and Leaders Council, a 15-member body created by a 2011 state law and commissioned to design the evaluations, is now backing a bill that would delay the date the system goes into effect by two years. The proposal, which sponsor state Sen. Debbie Smith says is still being drafted, seeks a multi-year trial period so officials can phase in the evaluations and see whether they work as they’re supposed to.

If the timeline isn’t extended, Fitz­patrick said, “We won’t have a defensible system. We’ll spend our dollars in the courtroom and not the classroom.”

Driven by cash-flush programs such as the federal Race to the Top grants, and reform initiatives , many states have fast-tracked efforts to link teacher hiring and firing decisions to student performance data. But nobody’s done it right yet.

In December, Florida published educator rankings based on a teacher evaluation system, only to pull back on the data a few hours after it was released. The numbers were corrected, and it was later put back online.

In Houston, a program that awards bonuses to teachers based on performance has been criticized as opaque and confusing. One teacher told the Houston Chronicle the program feels like winning the lottery — the reward feels unrelated to what’s happening in the classroom .

Fitzpatrick says the zeal to turn schools around, and the incentive of huge pots of federal money, means lawmakers are asking for the systems before they’re thoroughly vetted.

“Research is way behind policy in this regard,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’re having to test drive these systems without an empirical understanding of what happens.”

As it stands, Nevada’s proposed teacher evaluations assess two things. One is instructional practice — how a teacher actually does his or her job, as measured by an administrator’s observations in the classroom and surveys of parents. The other half of the equation is student outcomes — how well the teacher’s students perform on state tests.

The challenge is to develop an evaluation that can detect a highly effective teacher even when his or her classroom is full of English-language learners, low-income students, or children with disabilities who don’t perform well on standardized tests. It should also be able to pinpoint an ineffective teacher in a classroom of high scorers on the tests.

That’s why the student achievement portion — 50 percent of a teacher’s score — will count student growth as 35 percent, reducing achievement gaps as 10 percent, and student test scores as 5 percent.

The council plans to observe carefully and adjust the formula as needed during the trial period.

“We need a couple years to try it out to see if the data we collect is reflective of teachers and what they do,” said Theresa Crowley, a council member who teaches first and second grade at Rita Cannan Elementary School in Reno.

Crowley says many teachers have been skeptical of the evaluation process, worrying that their jobs would be in jeopardy if they end up with a difficult group of students.

“The worry is that what we’re having to do isn’t being shown,” Crowley said, citing her personal experience with students who were struggling to simply attend class. “We saw tremendous growth, but it didn’t show on a test score — it showed on their attendance … Someone reading in a newspaper just reads it and sees, ‘Those kids bombed, those teachers sucked.’u2009”

Officials with the state teachers union, which has questioned the state’s plans to move a teacher to a “probationary” status after two unsatisfactory evaluations, say they’re generally onboard with the work of the Teachers and Leaders Council and the idea of evaluations.

But they want the state to provide more funding for teacher and administrator training, and plan to ask for it at a legislative education committee meeting today.

“The whole new evaluation really hinges on whether teachers receive proper professional development,” said Craig Stevens, a lobbyist for the Nevada State Education Association. “We aren’t sure those systems are in place to help them be the teachers they want to be.”

While he acknowledges there are plenty of potential pitfalls to the system, state Superintendent James Guthrie is optimistic. “I’m convinced it can be done,” he said.

Ultimately, he wants a system that can locate highly effective teachers so they can be paid more and promoted to positions of influence. He envisions the best teachers staying in the classroom as “master” or “mentor” teachers to their counterparts, and making as much money as the school principal.