Dive Brief:

• The New Jersey State Board of Education is making moves to implement a compromise between state officials and educators that will minimize the importance of student test scores in teacher evaluations in the 2014-15 school year.
• Last month, state officials and educators agreed that instead of test scores being worth 30% of a teacher's effectiveness score, they will only be worth 10% for English Language Arts and math teachers.     
• The change came after much vocalization from teachers who complained that their evaluations would be based on scores from the new, online, Common Core-aligned PARCC test.

Dive Insight:

For teachers who do not teach ELA or math, their evaluation will be broken down to 80% classroom observations and 20% student growth objectives. The compromise also includes an expedited review process for teachers who believe SGO scores brought their scores down unfairly.  

It seems difficult to find a happy medium. While many teachers are grateful that the test scores will not affect their evaluations too much, others are now worried that the new plan — which places more emphasis on classroom observations — will mean schools will hire more administrators for all of the observations.