State superintendent questions cost, effectiveness of changing teacher evaluation system

Hofmeister serves as chairwoman of the Teacher and Leader Effectiveness Commission, which was asked by the Legislature to research and recommend by Dec. 1 a variety of new systems for quantitative measurement of teacher and principal performance by 2017-18 at the latest.

At Thursday’s commission meeting, Hofmeister questioned whether the state can even afford the scheme. Secondly, she said she doesn’t want to undermine the success of the statewide system for qualitative measures of public school educators — which the state’s Teacher and Leader Effectiveness law ushered in several years ago and are based on school administrator observations.

“I think we need to think about what do we have the capacity to do within our state and to do well,” Hofmeister said, adding that she doesn’t want to see Oklahoma “lose an investment our commission, our teachers, our state, our districts have already placed in an evaluation tool that was mandated, but one I believe in.”

Sen. John Ford, R-Bartlesville, was the Senate author of both the original 2010 legislation that established the statewide TLE system and last year’s Senate Bill 706, which amended the system and delayed its implementation to 2017-18.

He told his fellow TLE commissioners Thursday that not only is he open to recommendations about how to amend the current TLE law but that a section in Senate Bill 706 requires an ongoing examination of the system to identify necessary tweaks.

“Things have changed. We have learned,” Ford said. “We are truly learning, and I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Of the original intent behind the establishment of a state evaluation system for public educators, Ford said, “It is not designed as a ‘gotcha’ system. And I have been hopeful that as we have made some of these changes, we are trying to get closer to a system … to provide the proper professional development and growth for all teachers.”

The idea for having a state Teacher and Leader Effectiveness system came from Tulsa Public Schools, which developed its own cutting-edge teacher evaluation system with grants and donations through local and national philanthropic groups.

In 2010, state law mandated a rating system through which teachers and principals who were found to be ineffective could risk losing their jobs. It went even further in specifying that educators be held 50 percent accountable for quantitative measures such as student test scores and surveys and 50 percent accountable for qualitative measures, meaning classroom observations.

Hofmeister and Ford both alluded to the fact that Tulsa Public Schools’ system has never been so black and white.

And yet Tulsa’s TLE system, which has been allowed to operate under an exception to state law, has been credited for helping the district release hundreds of ineffective teachers and identify many more to receive additional support and training.

Jana Burk, a top Tulsa Public Schools administrator who helped develop and has overseen the district’s TLE system for years, told the commission that quantitative measures are never the sole basis for not renewing a teacher’s contract in Tulsa.

She said the Tulsa district’s protocol, which was developed in partnership with the local teachers union, is still largely driven by the school principal’s performance assessment.

“We don’t want quantitative measures to be the fear factor of bringing somebody’s (evaluation) score down,” Burk said. “Principal feedback and support and decision-making is ultimately the foundation, but those quantitative measures need to inform principals’ next steps with teachers and certainly are supposed to be drivers of improvement and reflection, not a hammer of adverse employment decisions in and of themselves.”

The TLE Commission is expected to decide what recommendations to make to the state Board of Education and the Legislature at its next meeting, set for Nov. 5.