The Task Force on Educator Evaluation will present its final recommendations for a new evaluation system to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) on March 22nd.  MBAE has serious concerns about its focus and content.  MBAE Executive Director Linda Noonan, who served on the Task Force, voted with the minority against the report. Her remarks to the BESE last month and her blog post explain why.

An ever-growing body of research demonstrates that great teachers are critical to student achievement and can even overcome the significant challenges of closing achievement gaps for disadvantaged and minority students.  Standing in the way of effective teaching are broken evaluation systems for teachers and administrators.

The Task Force recommends that evaluations be focused primarily on processes of educator practice rather than on student outcomes. MBAE has consistently taken the position that improving student performance is the most important factor in the evaluation of a teacher's effectiveness.  If a teacher does not improve student performance, we consider the teacher unsuccessful, even if the teacher has many other worthy qualities.   

MBAE also believes that this new evaluation system has be to implemented statewide, even if this requires changing statutes regarding local control or collective bargaining.  Teacher evaluation is the key to so many other education priorities - closing achievement gaps, preparing students for college and college completion, building the STEM workforce we need - that it is really critical for the state's economic vitality and competitiveness.

While the Task Force acknowledged that student achievement should be a "signficant" factor, it did not define this in any meaningful way.  MBAE is therefore calling for multiple measures of student achievement to be at least 50% of an educator's evaluation. 

Visit our website for more information - and today's post on this topic on our MassEdForum blog!

More in The Boston Globe today!