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Hold state legislators to same scale they hold the teachers

DEAR EDITOR:

Legislators passed a law in 2009 that basically said the state’s Educator Standards Board should develop a new way to evaluate Ohio teachers. The new evaluation procedures hold teachers accountable to their educational community.

It is data-driven. The system uses evidence, observations and other data collection, like student test scores, to prove the instructor’s efficacy. Teachers are then rated as accomplished, skilled, developing or ineffective. These ratings may then be used for promotion, employment or termination decisions.

Why not hold legislators to the same evaluation procedures? Legislators need to be held accountable to their communities by demonstrating a practice of accomplishment through effective practices.

For a legislator’s evaluations, it should not matter if his or her area’s funding continues to not be constitutional (DeRolph vs. State), if the economy is not recovering (student scores improving), if the area’s funding continues to be cut or re-appropriated (money appropriated to Ohio’s charter schools), or if there is a lack of community involvement (the parental piece lacking in the current educational evaluating system). The legislator needs to be held responsible.

There will be no excuses from you. You need to start performing effectively, placed on an improvement plan, then retained or terminated.

Legislators /politicians need to be held to the same standards as they hold teachers. Sometimes we voters / taxpayers are left wondering about their efficacy, too.

This same evaluation should be used to determine on what committees they serve, what salaries they deserve, what promotions they receive and what employment / termination decisions they earn

I doubt legislators would want this type of evaluation procedure for themselves. No more career politicians (tenure). What is good enough for Ohio’s teachers ought to be good enough for Ohio’s legislators.

Implementation for evaluation models for legislators probably will be as difficult as the process school administrators and teachers have with the new evaluation system.

For each teacher in the school system, there are the walk-throughs, observations, written documentation, conferences concerning the observations, data collection, improvement plans, funding for the process, and time better spent actually working with students.

For each teacher working in a school system, an administrator probably has to visit each classroom eight to 10 times. Is this not an absurd waste of time and taxpayer money?

To me, this entire evaluation process for teachers is a political issue. For one thing, a scapegoat was needed for the socio-economic problems of this country, and teachers were expected to fix those problems within the school day. Without funds, parental and political involvement, those problems will be difficult to fix. It is tedious, time-consuming and expensive.

Accountability, efficacy and insightful activity is as important for legislators as it is for educators. Insightful legislative activity at this point might be for legislators to return to the DeRolph v. State case to solve that funding problem first.

Once that funding issue is settled by legislators, other issues may be addressed, including the teacher evaluation model being revisited and / or rewritten with actual “in-school” educators involved, not state or federal educators and politicians.

Nancy Kujala

Southington

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