New Teacher Evaluation Hearing

Recently the Legislative Education Committee (LESC) met to receive input regarding the new Teacher Evaluation System. The Districts that had piloted in 2012-2013 reported that they had informed the PED that the new system was burdensome and needed more time to work the “bugs” out. As we are painfully aware the PED did not listen. This seems to be a pattern and of course blame teachers. While some legislators suggested a moratorium the reality is the Governor would never go along with the idea. The only hope to stop the madness is the court challenge that will be heard in late November. The Value Added Model (VAM) that is used to determine whether teachers are doing their jobs is seriously flawed. Study after study has demonstrated that it has no reliability. The same teacher, teaching different classes, gets a wide range of results. The only consistent results using the VAM is teachers in middle to high economic districts get good results while teachers in poor districts get bad results. Duh! Did we need to go through this to realize that. That’s insane but I am just One New Mexico Teacher