MEANINGFUL EDUCATOR EVALUATIONS
To ensure that every student in California has an effective and supportive teacher, schools and districts need to provide educators the help they need to thrive. And to target help and support to best meet the needs of teachers, schools need to conduct meaningful performance evaluations of instructional staff and leadership that include actual measures of how the students in their classrooms are learning. Fortunately, California already has a law, the Stull Act, which includes provisions requiring evaluations of adults employed to educate kids to include information on how well those children are doing.
This law, which has been on the books for over four decades, was the basis of a successful lawsuit brought by a group of parents against the Los Angeles Unified School District in the fall of 2011. This lawsuit, Doe v. Deasy, reinforced the statutory requirement that all California districts must include measures of pupil progress in educators’ evaluations.
But what about the other over 1,000 school districts in California? Are they complying with the student progress requirements of the Stull Act?
The EdVoice Institute has undertaken an ongoing effort to answer that question.
Its initial analysis, Student Progress Ignored, looks at a sample of 26 school districts throughout the state for clear indication of policies and actual evaluations that demonstrate compliance with the law. The analysis exposes a disturbing pattern of non-compliance and ineffective personnel management. The result, some teachers aren’t getting the help they need, others are forced to go through professional development that adds no value to their practice.