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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Independent Report: Teachers Remain Skeptical About New Evaluation System - NJ Spotlight

Independent Report: Teachers Remain Skeptical About New Evaluation System - NJ Spotlight:


Independent Report: Teachers Remain Skeptical About New Evaluation System
Study also raises concerns about deadlines and reliability, but lead author finds reasons to be optimistic

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With less than nine months and counting, New Jersey’s rollout of a statewide teacher evaluation system is moving ahead, but the deadlines are tight, reliability remains an issue -- and the system has yet to win the confidence of the teachers it's intended to evaluate.
That was the bottom line of a sweeping report by a team of Rutgers researchers that is following the early implementation of the system.
According to the state’s new tenure law, every district must have a revamped evaluation system in place by next school year.
The cautions and caveats of the report were tempered by the fact that the study was only looking at the first 10 pilot districts in their first year (2011-2012). Another 20 districts are in a second-year pilot that will be reported on this summer.
The report also did not delve into a central piece of the new process: the use of student

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