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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Losing it in Louisiana : Are All Schools Mandated to Find 10% of Teachers Ineffective?

Louisiana Educator: Are All Schools Mandated to Find 10% of Teachers Ineffective?:


Are All Schools Mandated to Find 10% of Teachers Ineffective?

Is Superintendent White really serious about requiring that 10% of public school teachers be rated as “ineffective”? If so, will this be mandated on a school-by-school basis or on a school system basis or on a statewide basis? Comments from some of my readers this week prompted me to research this issue further. The following is an exact reprint of a statement in the Act 54 evaluation plan recently submitted by White to the US Dept. of Education as part of the ESEA Flexibility Request. Judge for yourself what it means.
4. Establishing Measures of Effectiveness: For teachers where value added data is available, the composite percentile is converted to a 1.0-5.0 scale to use in the teacher’s final evaluation. Teachers and leaders (school-wide) whose value added, composite percentile fall within the bottom 10% will receive an ineffective rating. Teachers in the middle 20-80% range will receive a rating of effective. The top 10% of teachers will receive a rating of highly effective.”

Since that plan was submitted, White has announced that the rating scale will be changed from a 5 level scale