Pennsylvania’s public schools should be the safest and healthiest places for students to learn and grow. To make sure they are, we need the most qualified teachers, teaching assistants, school nurses, counselors, psychologists, and social workers.
Legislation to overhaul the current evaluation system was approved by the General Assembly on March 25, along with legislative language aimed at addressing the COVID-19 emergency in public schools.
The bill will overhaul the current educator evaluation system, significantly reducing the impact of student performance, including standardized tests, in favor of classroom observation and practice.
It will:
An effective educator is key to student success, and every student deserves to have high-quality educators in their schools and classrooms.
Unfortunately, administrators and educators agree that the current evaluation system isn’t working. The current system doesn’t support the continuous improvement of educators in their practice and professionalism as promised in 2012, because it:
Sen. Ryan Aument and Rep. Jesse Topper have engaged in a deliberative process to engage PSEA and other stakeholder groups in a dialogue to make significant improvements to the evaluation system.
Under current law (Act 82 of 2012), student performance components, based in part on standardized test results, account for 50 percent of an educator’s evaluation, while classroom observation and practice account for the other 50 percent.
SB 751 and HB 1607 would realign those weights, basing 70 percent of an educator’s evaluation on classroom observation and practice and 30 percent on student performance components.
By reducing the impact of standardized tests and student performance components, increasing the focus on classroom observation and practice, and taking the first step to recognize poverty's mpact on achievement, PA can improve the evaluation system.
The bill would simplify and revise the building-level measure School Percentage Profile (SPP) by mitigating several indicators, particularly those that unfairly penalize employees in struggling schools. The building level measure would also be adjusted by a “challenge multiplier” based on the population of economically disadvantaged students in school building in order to account for some of the strong correlation between poverty and standardized test performance.
The current Teacher Specific and Elective Data (student learning outcome) components would be combined into one overall category with each being worth 10 percent to close out the remaining 20 percent.
SB 751 and HB 1607 take a step forward in recognizing the impact that student poverty has on student achievement. The proposal would adjust the building-level measure by a “challenge multiplier” based on the population of economically disadvantaged students in each school building. This accounts for some of the strong correlation between poverty and standardized test performance.
Poverty affects students well beyond the classroom, often hampering their health and well-being, language development, and access to books and learning opportunities. Students living in poverty often score lower on standardized tests than students in middle-income and more affluent districts.
If Pennsylvania is going to continue to use test data in educator evaluations, the commonwealth must control for factors beyond the control of educators and students. These bills take an important first step in acknowledging the relationship between poverty and student achievement.
In addition to the components above, educators have identified other important adjustments that we believe would improve the current evaluation system. Sen. Aument and Rep. Topper’s legislation takes this input into account and addresses key issues that will improve the system overall.