Schools

State Releases First Results from Trials of Teacher Evaluation System

Initial report correlates data collected from 25 districts participating in pilot for at least a year

By John Mooney, Courtesy of NJ Spotlight

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. The sample size of the pilots -- ranging from tiny Alexandria to the 2,000 teachers in Elizabeth -- was small for a state with 100,000 teachers, especially when student test scores were used. Nonetheless, it provided the first hard data that has been released on the early impact of the new evaluation requirement that has roiled schools across the state.

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