Teacher evaluations will have to be based largely on student performance if Indiana school districts want to share in up to $250 million in federal stimulus money, state officials said.

Educators have resisted the concept, saying their effectiveness should not be judged on students’ standardized test scores. But if Indiana wants a piece of $4.4 billion the federal government is awarding nationwide as part of President Obama’s Race to the Top competition, the state must link student achievement to teacher performance.

"They can’t do that. They can’t," said Taya Riebersal, sixth-grade teacher at Shawnee Middle School. "I just don’t know how you can with the variety of kids that you get. I just don’t think that you can tie someone’s evaluation to one test when you’ve had (the student) for nine months."

Officials with the Indiana Department of Education said they are trying to figure out how to implement the plan and were hesitant to provide specific details. The idea is being connected to a new way of measuring student achievement that looks at how students progress over time, another requirement for the federal Race to the Top application.

The Indiana Department of Education hopes to release the first phase of the new model this month, and officials presented some details to the State Board of Education last week.

The enticement of more money might be too hard to resist for school districts being forced to slash budgets and lay off teachers. Many already have relied on stimulus money to keep programs for low-income and special-education students afloat.

The state is dealing with a $475 million shortfall from not collecting as much tax revenue as projected. Cuts have already come nearly everywhere but K-12 education.

School districts will not be forced to revamp their evaluation process. But if they want their names attached to the federal application with the chance of receiving more money, they will have to sign a memorandum of understanding stating that at least 51 percent of every teacher’s evaluation will be based on student achievement, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett told the state board.

The General Assembly amended state law last summer to say that a portion of teacher evaluations can be tied to student achievement if the state is seeking federal money that requires it.

State officials are working with the Indiana State Teachers Association to figure out the details, said Cam Savage, spokesman for the Indiana Department of Education.

Tying teacher evaluations to student achievement would have to be negotiated between the union and the school district as part of the bargaining process, said Steve Brace, executive director of the Fort Wayne Education Association, the union for Fort Wayne Community Schools teachers.

Fort Wayne teachers will begin negotiating a new contract in January, and Brace expects the new teacher-evaluation provision will play a role in the process.

Brace said he didn’t want to comment too much on the state’s plan because it hasn’t been finalized. But he said he’s never had as many calls or e-mails from teachers as he has recently about the number of mandates they’re being asked to abide by.

"This is a very frustrating and difficult time for teachers. They’re feeling a lot of anxiety. They’ve got the weight of the world on them," Brace said.

"It’s more than ever. We’ve got a multitude of teachers that just feel like every time they turn around, they’re being asked to do something else."

Measuring teaching

Proponents of evaluating teachers based on how their students perform believe it’s the ultimate way to make educators accountable. If they’re good teachers, the students will perform well.

Critics say too many factors outside of a teacher’s control play a role in how students fare on standardized tests. There are also questions about how educators who teach subjects that are not tested – such as physical education, art or elective classes – would be evaluated.

It’s widely understood that few districts take teacher evaluations seriously, said Michael Petrilli, vice president of national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, non-profit think tank dedicated to advancing educational excellence. Basically, every teacher is rated highly because managers don’t want to deal with grievances filed by the teacher or the unions, he said.

Current teacher evaluations don’t adequately measure teaching effectiveness, leading to a system where 90 percent of teachers are given high ratings and only a tiny portion are deemed unsatisfactory, according to a National Education Association report on teacher-evaluation systems.

Brace, an FWCS teacher for nearly 30 years, raises questions on whether a passing rate can be connected only to a student’s current teacher. If a third-grade class did well on a test, is it because of what the third-grade teacher did or what the second-grade teacher did, he asked. Maybe a number of the students attended preschool or their kindergarten teacher was effective, Brace said.

"There’s so many factors that go into that, … not to mention the least of that the students themselves," Brace said. "If you go down that path, you have to go down it very carefully. Whatever kind of evaluation system you have, you want one that’s fair and that’s honest."

Looking at achievement gain over time instead of just the results of a single test levels the playing field for students who come from diverse backgrounds, said Mike Podgursky, an economics professor at the University of Missouri who has done research for the federally funded National Center on Performance Incentives.

"You’re not holding the teachers accountable for their overall level of achievement," Podgursky said. "You’re only holding people accountable for gains, and that really does level the playing field a lot."

Celia Shand, superintendent of Wabash City Schools, is confident her teachers would do well under an evaluation tied to student performance.

"As a former classroom teacher, and I still consider myself a classroom teacher, I would not have a problem with anybody tying any type of evaluation of students to my performance evaluation," Shand said.

Michael Pettibone, state board member and superintendent of Adams Central Community Schools, said everywhere he’s worked, student performance has always been a piece of the discussion when evaluating teachers. Teachers should be able to explain why their students are growing and why they’re not, he said.

"I think most teachers realize in this age of accountability that we’ve been through the last 20 years that this is becoming more of a potential," Pettibone said.

Grading on progress

Looking at the progress a student makes from one year to the next is exactly what Indiana officials want to do. The new student achievement model the state plans to unveil will take a student’s ISTEP+ score and compare it to those of other students who scored similarly to them on previous tests.

School officials will be able to track how individual students grow academically from year to year. Students will be measured based on how much they raise their test scores, not by how well they perform on one test.

"ISTEP+ only looks at, do you pass or do you not pass," said John Kline, director of federal programs and accountability for Fort Wayne Community Schools, who also served on a state committee that studied achievement models. "We don’t know from ISTEP+ whether kids are going up or down."

One student could perform at a consistent, proficient level year after year but not grow academically. Another could start out with a low passing rate and grow a great deal but still not be considered passing.

After it is fully implemented next year, state officials want to use this achievement model to measure Indiana students under the federal No Child Left Behind accountability law. Instead of measuring whether students passed or not, they would be counted for how much they raised their individual test scores.

ksoderlund@jg.net

Niki Kelly of The Journal Gazette’s Indianapolis bureau contributed to this story.