Education Week - March 6, 2013 - 1

Education Week
VOL. 32, NO. 23 • MARCH 6, 2013

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BREAKING NEWS DAILY

Feds, States
Dicker Over
Evaluations
Teacher Plans Prove Hurdle

Mark Graham for Education Week

By Michele McNeil

Principal Appraisals Get a Remake
More and More Districts Are Factoring Student Test Scores Into Personnel Reviews
By Jaclyn Zubrzycki
A growing number of school districts—including large
ones like those in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and
Hawaii—have become recent converts to new principalevaluation systems that tie school leaders’ appraisals to
student test scores.
As of this school year, student achievement accounts for
40 percent to 50 percent of principals’ evaluations in each
of those school systems, while district leaders in a number
of other places are preparing to make similar changes in
coming school years.
The switch to the new-breed evaluation systems comes
on the heels of efforts nationwide to incorporate studentachievement measures into teachers’ evaluations. For principals, the move is being prompted by U.S. Department of

Education grant programs such as Race to the Top, which
requires states or districts to tie principal effectiveness “in
significant part” to growth in student achievement, and by
No Child Left Behind waivers, which allow states flexibility on some requirements of the federal law in exchange
for adopting certain policies, including revamped educatorevaluation procedures.
Test scores are generally one of several measures of student achievement used in new principal evaluations, which
also look at school climate surveys and improvements in
teachers’ effectiveness, among other gauges.
“There’s this collective realization that it’s more complex than just a single test score,” said Dick Flanary, the
deputy executive director of programs and services at the
National Association of Secondary School Principals, a

Nikki Hudson,
left, the
academic
coordinator
at Lida Hooe
Elementary
School in Dallas,
compares notes
with Principal
Linda Saenz
during a
principalevaluation
session.

The price tag to win a seat in this week’s
primary election for the Los Angeles school
board climbed to unprecedented levels, as
a massive influx of outside cash turned a
local campaign into a national showdown
pitting the long-standing influence of teachers’ unions against the expanding imprint of
deep-pocketed education activists.
In the days leading up to the March 5 primary, total spending in three races for the
Los Angeles board of education surpassed $4
million, roughly the same amount that Tom
Torlakson, California’s schools chief, spent to
win his statewide election in 2010. More than

80 percent of that spending on the Los Angeles races came through independent expenditures in behalf of candidates. Three seats
are up for grabs on the seven-member board.
Much of the money poured into the Coalition for School Reform, a Los Angeles group
that had been spending the cash on behalf
of three candidates who back district Superintendent John E. Deasy and his agenda of
revamping teacher evaluations to include
student outcomes, speeding the process for
firing underperforming teachers and principals, and supporting charter schools.
The coalition is closely aligned with Los
Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a
Democrat, who helped coax New York City

PAGE 24>

Governors Take
Varied Routes
In Boosting Aid
By Andrew Ujifusa

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to give $1 million. Former District of Columbia Schools
Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s Sacramentobased StudentsFirst organization kicked in
$250,000; Eli Broad, the billionaire education
philanthropist, also contributed $250,000. Mr.
Broad, who lives in Los Angeles, has previously contributed to school board candidates
he favored.
United Teachers of Los Angeles mounted
a major effort, too, spending more than
$600,000 and organizing in behalf of its
preferred candidates, as well as opposing
the re-election bid of Mónica García, the
current board president and one of Mr.

As states consider increases to K-12
spending amid better economic conditions, governors on opposite sides
of the partisan divide are proposing
significantly different plans and arguments for the best ways to use new
education aid.
Two prime examples: Minnesota
and Ohio, a pair of Midwestern states
with chief executives intent on pumping more money into education—and
sharply contrasting visions of how to
do it.
In Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton, a
member of the Democratic-FarmerLabor Party, is urging an expansion
of early-education services such as allday kindergarten, as well as a $118
million hike in the standard per-pupil
funding system. The total price tag for
his plan: $344 million over two years.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, is proposing $1.3 billion in new
education spending, a new approach

PAGE 18>

PAGE 23>

PAGE 16>

Los Angeles School Board Race Shatters Spending Records
By Lesli A. Maxwell

Even though 34 states and the District of Columbia have No Child Left
Behind Act waivers in hand, many of
them are still negotiating with the
U.S. Department of Education over
their teacher-evaluation systems—
a crucial component if they want to
keep their newfound flexibility.
More than six months after waiver
recipients turned in their guidelines to
the department, only 12 waiver states
have gotten the green light for their
evaluation systems. Education Department officials expect to start sending
more approval letters soon, along with
notices on which plans need more work.
The slow approval process comes as
states continue to pilot their evaluation systems, grapple with issues such
as evaluating teachers in nontested
subjects, and figure out how to make
student growth a significant factor in
teacher ratings—all on a tight timeline dictated for the most part by the
federal department.
In fact, 11 states had to change their
planned teacher-evaluation systems,
or create them anew, to qualify for a

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Education Week - March 6, 2013

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