Rep. Cook has introduced HB 1002 which gets rid of the requirement that “objective measures of student achievement and growth” as a required component of teacher evaluations. This is similar to the subject matter of SB 59 which I mentioned a few days ago which would limit such “objective measures” to 5% of a teacher’s evaluation. I keep putting the “objective measures” in scare quotes because we’re not entirely sure what they are measuring. On top of that, the problem with using them as part of a teacher’s evaluation is that there are too many confounding variables. It’s very difficult to trust that higher or lower student test scores are a function of any given teacher’s performance. For example, such scores track very closely with household income.
This looks so much like the recent spate of welfare payments to farmers for crops they can’t sell because Trump started the whole mess with tariffs. If there had been no tariffs, the would have been no problem. The state introduced testing essentially as a quick fix to evaluate teachers, which everyone who knew anything knew was nonsense, but who needs data when you have ideology? Now comes the bill to stop the quick fix that everyone knew was only trouble. Does the elevator go to the top for anyone out there?