Florida’s Department of Education released the first results of a sweeping new teacher evaluation system Wednesday morning that sought to provide more accurate data on teacher effectiveness and increase accountability, the Huffington Post reports. But state officials retracted the information just hours later, citing inaccuracies: thousands of teachers were double-counted as a result of duplicate job codes, the Tampa Bay Times Reports. The reports rated 95 percent of the state’s teachers as “effective,” according to WTSP, but showed results for 23,970 teachers, when the state actually employs fewer than 15,000 educators. Florida Education Department spokesperson Cynthia Sucher told the Times that the error is “distressing” to the agency. But those who have been critical of the new evaluations were not surprised — like the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, otherwise known as FairTest and a longtime critic of high-stakes testing…
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