MEMSPA – Teacher and Administrator Evaluation Update
The House Education Committee held another hearing this week on Senate Bill 103. After multiple weeks of testimony from groups and individuals both in support of and in opposition to the bill, the votes do not exist in the committee to move the bill to the House floor at this time. Both Democratic and Republican members on the committee have expressed concerns with the bill as passed by the Senate, and attempts to reach consensus thus far have not been successful. At this point, the major concerns raised by committee members are as follows:
- Some members have indicated they do not support the Senate version, but rather prefer the version of the bills that passed last session overwhelmingly in the House that required districts to choose from a list of research-based standardized evaluation tools with funding provided for schools both to purchase the tools and train evaluators.
- Some members feel that schools already have placed excessive testing requirements on students and teachers, and would prefer a lower portion of evaluations to be based on student growth than the 40% threshold in the bill as passed by the Senate. However, while lowering that percentage gains some votes on the committee, other members feel the 40% threshold for student growth should be increased and have indicated they would opposed efforts to reduce that number.
- The Governor’s office has indicated he does not support Senate Bill 103 as passed by the Senate.
If the legislature is unable to reach agreement on a new teacher and administrator evaluation framework before the start of the next school year this fall, current law dictates the percentage of evaluations based on student growth will automatically increase to 50%. Given that the House is only scheduled to be in session for a few days in July and August before returning to regular session in September, and that he Senate will recess next week before returning to session for the summer other than a two-week recess in late July/Early August, time is running short.
MEMSPA remains hopeful that all parties continue to meet over the summer to resolve differences.