Schools and Education Lawmakers Open to Looking at Testing's Role in Teacher Evals

BRADENTON — When Florida lawmakers decided to base half of teachers' evaluations on student test scores, it was in response to districts failing to implement past statutes requiring them to use performance metrics in their scoring. However, lawmakers say they intend to look at the level to which they currently count toward teacher evals in this year's legislative session.
 

Test scores currently count for 50 percent of a teacher's total score, but Florida Senator John Legg, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, recently told the Tampa Bay Times that his committee would be taking a look at that number and whether it's too high.
 
For years, education reformers on the right complained that teachers needed to be held more accountable for student performance and that tying their evaluations and essentially their career progression to student test scores was the best way to ensure that they were striving for improvement.
 
In practice, the process has led administrators, teachers, students and parents along with reformers on the left to complain that too much emphasis has been placed on teaching to the test, while too much time and district resources were spent developing and conducting the testing that is required to complete the evals.
 
Lawmakers still seem intent to include such testing as a component of the evaluation system; however, it seems likely that at least some of them are open to the idea of reducing its role to something less than the status quo.
 
This year's legislative session begins on March 3.