House Committee Discussing Education Evaluations

Senate Bill 103, introduced by Senator Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair), was before the House Education Committee Thursday, marking the first time since last term that the House has considered teacher evaluations. According to Senator Pavlov, the bill is a compromise between the House bills from last session and a Senate substitute that never came up for a vote during lame duck.

The bill would require that a school district use the evaluation tool of their choice across the entire district; however, the same tool does not have to be used to evaluate administrators. Noticeably absent from the house bills considered last session are the provisions requiring districts to select a tool from a list of approved venders and the appropriation of $17 million for implementation of the program.

Current state law would require year-end evaluations to be based 50 percent on student growth and assessment in the 2015-16 school year; however, under the proposed legislation year-end evaluations would be based at least 25 percent on student growth and assessment beginning with the 2017-18 year. The bill would then increase the percentage influence of student growth and assessment data to at least 40 percent starting with the 2018-19 school year, leaving the rest of the evaluation to be based on the measured performance of an educator under the adopted evaluation tool.

Senate Bill 103 would change various other methods of evaluations including: reducing the evaluation requirements to twice a year, the pushing back of notifying parents if their student is going to be taught by a teacher who has been deemed ineffective for two consecutive years to the 2018-19 school year, and requiring administrators to be evaluated once a year. The bill received testimony of support from the Association of School Boards, the Calhoun Intermediate School District, and the Michigan Association of Public School Academies. Groups who testified in opposition of the bill were the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals and Education Trust-Midwest.

posted by PAA Online , Friday, June 5, 2015 10:52 AM
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