Dive Brief:
- While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced this week that the state's teacher evaluations will begin to include student test scores, he scaled back the scores' impact, opting instead to phase them in.
- Though it must still be approved by the state's board of education, Christie's phase-in plan will see student test scores account for 10% of a teacher's 2014-15 evaluation and rising to 20% in the next two years, as opposed to the initially set 30%.
- Also revealed were plans to create a commission charged with assessing the effectiveness of K-12 standardized tests.
Dive Insight:
In many states, a major concern when the Common Core was adopted was how test scores would affect teacher evaluations. Federal officials have been sticklers about incorporating scores into teacher evaluations. However, many educators are nervous that the new, more rigorous exams will not only result in lower test scores the first few years, but also that incorporating test scores into evaluations doesn't take into account the individual learning and needs of the students. The conditions — poverty, overcrowding, etc. — surrounding the students a teacher educates are not included. Christie's decision to phase the scores in deals slightly with the issue of getting used to harder exams, but nothing is addressing the fact that scores may not accurately assess how a teacher benefits a student beyond one exam.
