The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) is voting to approve the final changes to the regulations on the statewide educator evaluation system on February 28, 2017. Among the set of revisions to the existing regulator rules for educator evaluation are the elimination of the “student impact rating” and the introduction of a “student learning indicator” inserted into the standards.
Commissioner Mitchell Chester brushed off concerns voiced by educators regarding the use of test scores to evaluate teacher performance. In his cover memo attached to the draft regulations, Commissioner Chester states:
Finally, MTA and AFT-MA assert: “The best approach to address the problems of the current system is to eliminate the use of student test results to inform any rating of a teacher’s performance.” January 27, 2017 letter at p. 3. I disagree. In my view, teaching and learning is the core work of our schools to prepare students for life after high school; consequently, we need to pay attention to student learning and build it into the evaluation system.
And as we all know, test scores are the very best way to know if our students are prepared for real life, no?
The BESE meeting documents are not yet posted on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website as of today (February 23), but you can read the Commissioner’s Cover memo and the proposed regulatory changes here:
Cover Memo: Educator Evaluation – Proposed Amendments to the Regulations on Student Impact Rating
Proposed Changes to 603 CMR 35.00 Evaluation of Educators
For more information on the upcoming BESE meetings, please visit www.doe.mass.edu/boe/boedate.html