Dependant on Value Added Model, even 1% is too much, LFT says
(Baton Rouge – October 8, 2010) With a growing number of reports illustrating the chaos fomented by a new teacher evaluation system, Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan asks school boards to limit the damage by minimizing the effect that the system has on teacher compensation.
Under Act 1 of 2012, school boards must design new teacher salary schedules by January 1, and have them in place by the 2013-14 school year. The law requires teacher effectiveness as measured by these evaluations to determine up to 50% of teacher compensation. The Louisiana Federation of Teachers has challenged the constitutionality of the new law.
“This is insane,” said Monaghan. “A broken system, a flawed model, will be used to determine the intrinsic value of teachers and their economic worth.
“We urge school boards to protect their teachers from unnecessary damage by minimizing the effect that the flawed system will have on teacher compensation,” Monaghan said. “We understand that the law requires a percentage; we’re saying make it one percent or less, until this is fixed.”
Recently, a major newspaper called Governor Jindal’s evaluation scheme unfair and concluded that it “borders on immoral.” Just last week, one of the governor’s chief allies and a strong supporter of Act 1called the evaluation scheme “ridiculous.”
“We are learning that many of the state’s finest teachers will be labeled ‘ineffective’ because of a flawed rating system which squeezes teachers into predetermined results or outcomes,” Monaghan said.
“Evidence from around Louisiana demonstrates that the new evaluation program does not accurately reflect teacher effectiveness,” Monaghan said. “It is an inappropriate instrument on which to base any significant portion of a teacher’s salary.”
The LFT president pointed to reports from different areas of the state as proof of the new program’s failure.
A recent article in the Lake Charles American Press noted that less than six percent of the teachers in Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron and Jeff Davis parishes were rated “highly effective,” even though their parishes consistently rank in the top 25% of all school districts.
An American Press editorial states that “In fact, Jeff Davis Parish, where only 3.06 percent of the evaluated teachers were rated highly effective, has routinely ranked in the top eight districts in the state.”
Reacting to this norm-referenced, bell-curved system, Jeff Davis Superintendent David Clayton told reporters, “What is the concrete standard for teachers?”
Louisiana’s new evaluation system, the newspaper concludes, “is not only unprofessional, it borders on immoral.”
In Northwest Louisiana, a similar problem has infuriated State Representative Alan Seabaugh, who strongly supported Act 1 when it was proposed in the legislature.
As reported by The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Seabaugh has sent letters to education leaders complaining about the ratings given to teachers in South Highlands Elementary school, the highest rated elementary school in Louisiana.
Even though most of the school’s fourth grade students posted high scores on standardized tests, their teachers from the previous year were all rated as “ineffective” because the scoring system that sets unrealistic growth targets for high-performing students.
As Seabaugh told The Advocate, “You literally have the most successful teachers in the state being told that they are highly ineffective.”
“Governor Jindal proposed and the legislature passed the law that now wreaks havoc,” Monaghan said. “It is the responsibility of the Governor and the legislature to fix it. Otherwise this inherently unfair and illogical the law will keep our courts busy for some time to come.”
“With the January 1 deadline for school districts to adopt new salary schedules rapidly approaching,” he concluded, “ systems should give these evaluations the smallest possible weight allowed by law.”