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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Complex new Florida teacher evaluations tied to student test scores
At Coral Reef Senior High, calculus teacher Orlando Sarduy understands complicated formulas, and knows he will be graded on how his students perform on tests. But despite his advanced knowledge of math, Sarduy cannot explain the statistics-packed formula behind the grade he’ll get, says the Hechinger Report. It is so confusing that even a member of the state committee tasked with developing it abstained from a vote because she didn’t understand it. The formula—in what is called a “value-added” model—tries to determine a teacher’s effect on a student’s FCAT performance by predicting what that student should score in a given year, and then rating the teacher on whether the student hits, misses or surpasses the mark…
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