State releases teacher effectiveness data

Indianapolis — The Indiana Department of Education released educator effectiveness data for the 2012-13 school year today.

Today’s release marks the first time this type of data has been gathered or released. Teachers were evaluated and rated as highly effective, effective, improvement necessary or ineffective.

Highly Effective: A highly effective teacher consistently exceeds expectations. This is a teacher who has demonstrated excellence, as determined by a trained evaluator, in locally selected competencies reasonably believed to be highly correlated with positive student learning outcomes. The highly effective teacher’s students, in aggregate, have generally exceeded expectations for academic growth and achievement based on guidelines suggested by the Indiana Department of Education.

Effective: An effective teacher consistently meets expectations. This is a teacher who has consistently met expectations, as determined by a trained evaluator, in locally selected competencies reasonably believed to be highly correlated with positive student learning outcomes. The effective teacher’s students, in aggregate, have generally achieved an acceptable rate of academic growth and achievement based on guidelines suggested by the Indiana Department of Education.

Improvement Necessary: A teacher who is rated as improvement necessary requires a change in performance before he/she meets expectations. This is a teacher who a trained evaluator has determined to require improvement in locally selected competencies reasonably believed to be highly correlated with positive student learning outcomes. In aggregate, the students of a teacher rated improvement necessary have generally achieved a below acceptable rate of academic growth and achievement based on guidelines suggested by the Indiana Department of Education.

Ineffective: An ineffective teacher consistently fails to meet expectations. This is a teacher who has failed to meet expectations, as determined by a trained evaluator, in locally selected competencies reasonably believed to be highly correlated with positive student learning outcomes. The ineffective teacher’s students, in aggregate, have generally achieved unacceptable levels of academic growth and achievement based on guidelines suggested by the Indiana Department of Education.

In Dubois County, only two school corporations, Southwest Dubois County and Greater Jasper Consolidated Schools, reported teachers that were in need of improvement — three of the 488 evaluated.

The majority were considered effective — 313 — or highly effective — 166. The map above shows each school corporation’s statistics.

Across the state the data show that over 87 percent of public school educators (teachers and administrators combined) were rated as either effective or highly effective while only 3 percent were rated as either needs improvement or ineffective. The remaining 10 percent did not receive a final evaluation due to circumstances such as resignation or retirement.

“I am encouraged by these numbers,” said Glenda Ritz, Superintendent of Public Instruction. “For the most part, they confirm what we already knew: that public schools throughout Indiana are filled with effective and highly effective teachers. Research shows that highly effective educators are exactly the type of leaders that can turn schools around and increase school performance.

“However, they also show us where we can improve. For example, when comparing the data by school performance grades A to F, there is an increase in the percentage of educators who fall within the improvement necessary and ineffective categories and the percentage that do not receive a final rating, indicating a retention concern in our lower performing schools.

“Finally, there is a marked decrease in the percentage of highly effective educators between schools that receive an A and those that receive an F. 32 percent of teachers in A schools are rated as highly effective, in comparison to just 11% in schools that received an F. Highly effective educators are vital to school turnaround and my Department will be working to address this gap moving forward.”

The data, including educator effectiveness broken down by school corporation and school can be found at http://doe.in.gov/evaluations.