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Conn. endorses new teacher evaluation methods

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February 11, 2012|By Stephanie Reitz

HARTFORD - For the first time, students’ academic progress will soon be a substantial factor in evaluating the skills of Connecticut’s 50,000-plus public school teachers and principals.

The state Board of Education unanimously endorsed guidelines yesterday for those performance evaluations, a key step in its request for a waiver from some No Child Left Behind law mandates and also in Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s proposal to reform tenure to make it easier for districts to dismiss inept teachers.

The framework was the result of an advisory council’s work, and will go to another advisory group to work out details on how the specifics would be put into practice. That includes recommending whether teachers labeled as substandard could keep teaching while trying to improve, and the point at which districts may want to start dismissal proceedings.

Connecticut teachers automatically receive tenure after their fourth year in the profession, and it can be revoked only under very specific circumstances and after a long process of hearings.

Critics say that allows inept or burned-out educators to keep their jobs at the expense of children who need strong teachers, and at the expense of a system in which the achievement gap keeps growing between wealthy and poor children.

Representatives of the state’s two largest teachers’ unions were part of the committee that endorsed the framework for the state board’s consideration. They have said they support reforming tenure and updating evaluations as long as the evaluations are fair, consistent, delivered by supervisors well trained in evaluation methods, and include chances to improve.

Local districts would be able to adopt the guidelines and use them for their evaluations, or use them as a model when they create or update their evaluations. Students’ academic progress always would have to be significant a factor, though.

Although leaders of the teachers’ unions have endorsed the framework, some of their members are worried about how it will work in practice.