NJ Spotlight published the following article on November 22, 2013. To read the full article, click here.
State Releases First Results from Pilot Trials of Teacher Evaluation Systems
John Mooney | November 22, 2013
Initial report correlates data collected from 25 districts participating in pilot for at least a year
As New Jersey public schools this year move to new teacher evaluation systems, two dozen districts that tested the systems over the past two years are starting to provide information about lessons learned and challenges ahead.
The Christie administration this week released the first of two reports from the 25 pilot districts that were charged — and funded — to test the new systems that use uniform evaluation practices, as well as student performance measures, to gauge the effectiveness of teachers.
The systems are a central piece of New Jersey’s new tenure reform law, known as TEACHNJ, and its requirements for strengthening the process for how teachers and principals are judged, retained, and, in some cases, let go.
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For instance, the report of the Evaluation Pilot Advisory Committee (EPAC) broke down how ratings were distributed across the pilots using the new practices, and found that the pilot districts continued to generally give their teachers strong scores on classroom practice.
In one breakdown of the 10 districts in the pilot for two years, the report said that 73 percent of teachers received at least an “effective” rating on a four-point scale. For another 15 districts in the pilot for one year, 86 percent were at least “effective.”