State Panel Suggests Student Test Results be Part of Teacher Evals

The state Board of Education next week will consider recommendations from the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council, a panel charged with reviewing the way teacher evaluations are performed, which will include proposals that teachers be evaluated, to a large degree, by how well their students perform on standardized tests.

The council also has suggested to the state board that annonymous input from parents and students be considered when teachers are evaluated, according to a report in the Connecticut Mirror.

The board will consider the council's recommendations when it meets next week.

The change in the way the state's 50,000 public school teachers are evaluated is the result of a sweeping education reform law that was pushed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in the last legislative session and approved by the General Assembly.

Malloy's reform proposals were widely criticized by teachers and their unions, but a compromise package was eventually approved. That deal sets in place, for the first time, a system by which teacher tenure and decisions on firing teachers will be tied to their evaluations, reviews that in turn will be tied to student performance.

The state Board of Education is now hammering out the details of how the new process will be implemented.

Editor's note: This article originally was published at 10:15 a.m. Friday, June 22. The time stamp has been changed for layout purposes on the Home page of Darien Patch.