Virtually no Del. teachers receive poor evaluations

Zero percent of Delaware teachers were rated ineffective and only 1 percent were rated "needs improvement" during the last school year, leaving more than half of teachers to be rated effective and almost half to be rated highly effective.

The new evaluation system stirred controversy when the state announced it would be factoring in standardized test scores. Some educators argued test scores don't necessarily measure good teaching and don't account for outside factors like parent involvement. And they worried their evaluations, and job situations, could suffer for circumstances beyond their control.

But in both years when test scores were considered, 99 percent of teachers received passing grades.

Terri Hodges, president of the state PTA, said her organization strongly supports teachers and knows they aren't the only factor that determines student success. But she said the fact that virtually no teachers received low ratings "is a big surprise."

"I think this means we need to take a hard look at this evaluation system," Hodges said. "We support a fair evaluation system, but we can't say that 99 percent of teachers are effective when we look at the number of students we're seeing reaching proficiency or how we stack up to other states."

State leaders say the system, called the Delaware Performance Appraisal System - II, is improving, and say looking at the data more closely will give teachers and schools valuable information about ways teachers can improve.

"At the same time, it's clear that there should be more variation in the final ratings to know when teachers are excelling and when additional support is needed," said Christopher Ruszkowski, chief of the teacher and leader effectiveness unit at the Department of Education.

The lack of almost any bad ratings upsets some who are trying to improve schools, arguing it places no pressure on teachers to step up their game.

"Everybody needs to be held accountable. Parents, teachers, schools, decision-makers the community, everybody needs to be accountable," said New Castle County Councilman Jea Street, a longtime critic of how schools serve urban students in Wilmington. "If you're going to leave any of those out, we're going to continue to miss the mark. And this does not hold teachers accountable."

Before a school board can fire a teacher based on evaluations, that teacher must have two straight years rated ineffective or three years of ineffective and needs improvement.

"Accountability is part of any evaluation process, but the day-to-day implementation is about supporting educators, not penalizing them," Ruszkowski said. "The purpose of DPAS II – and the reason we have made improving the system a high priority – is to help our schools provide the best possible classroom instruction to our children."

Frederika Jenner, president of the Delaware State Education Association teacher's union, said her organization applauds high marks for teachers.

"We think this is a terrific achievement, especially in light of the constant change that educators have experienced over the past few years," Jenner said, pointing to things like a growing number of students in poverty and sweeping new curriculum changes to meet new academic standards.

When asked if results that showed no teachers rated ineffective could be accurate, Jenner said the data was the best available.

"Certainly there are teachers who need to improve instruction," Jenner said. "The approach we need to take is that they need and deserve our assistance. They need the appropriate professional development and training to be successful."

This was the second year in which some teachers saw test scores included in the controversial Component V. Each student receives a growth goal based on their previous test history and how similar students scored, and a teacher is judged based on how many students meet those goals.

While Component V is only one of five parts in the overall evaluation, a teacher can't get better than a "needs improvement" if they are rated unsatisfactory on Component V.

The decision to include test scores irked teachers who argued those scores could change based on too many factors outside their control.

When only test scores were considered, 13 percent of teachers were rated ineffective, and only 32 percent exceeded expectations.

But only about 30 percent of educators – those who teach math and reading in grades 3-10 – have test scores as part of their evaluations, and the standardized test only makes up half of Component V for them. The other half is growth targets teachers and administrators set.

When teachers and administrators set their growth goals, they are clearly less ambitious than the state goals, state officials say. Only six percent of educators were rated ineffective in those cases. And only one percent were rated ineffective in the job-specific evaluations.

Another reason Component V did not cause many teachers to earn low rankings is because administrators are still overwhelmingly choosing to bump teachers up to satisfactory instead of ineffective when they have the option.

If two few students meet growth targets to be considered satisfactory but not enough miss them to be outright ineffective, administrators can choose to "bump them up" to satisfactory. They chose to do that 72 percent of the time.

In almost 85 percent of cases where teachers earned an unsatisfactory in one part of Component V and a satisfactory on the other, administrators chose to give them an overall satisfactory rating.

Those high rates come after state education leaders urged administrators to get tougher last year.

"We place important decisions in the hands of our educators, school leaders and district leaders," Ruszkowski said. "Parents, educators and school leaders need to know when teachers are excelling and when additional supports are needed. While the system is making progress in some important areas, the way discretion was used these past two years means it's not always possible to get a full picture of what's happening in our students' classrooms."

The other four components of the system are designed to measure teachers' daily practice, like planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction and professional responsibilities. They are measured through classroom observations and other interactions with administrators, and are less controversial.

All but one percent of educators were labeled satisfactory in all four of those components.

Despite the results, Ruszkowski said there is still plenty for teachers to use to improve. The state included more information this year on what specific parts of each components teachers were excelling in, for example.

The number of teachers rated "highly effective" dropped, especially in Component V. That's because the state tweaked the system so that higher-performing students were assigned growth goals that were more similar to lower-performing students.

State officials have said they will place a moratorium on using test scores for evaluations next year because the state is switching to a new standardized test.

Teachers continue to have mixed feelings about the evaluation process, according to an annual survey released alongside the results.

Among the teachers who responded, 47 percent said agreed that the evaluation is "fair and equitable," while 61 percent said the process is one of the five biggest drivers of student achievement gains. Only 28 percent of teachers and 22 percent of administrators agree that the system should be continued in its current form.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com or at 324-2428. Follow him on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.