The State Department of Education hasn’t announced any legislative priorities for this year yet, but the House and Senate Education Committees didn’t waste any time getting down to business as the 146th General Assembly opened its second session last week.
The legislature returned for business on Tuesday and the Education Committees held a joint session Wednesday afternoon, listening as Lillian Lowery, secretary of education, and some of her top advisors offered an update on current efforts to develop a new system to assess teacher performance under the state’s Reach to the Top plan.
Developing a broad plan to improve teacher accountability is one of the requirements imposed by the federal government in awarding Delaware a $119 million Reach to the Top grant.
Teachers, many of them wearing Delaware State Education Association name tags, filled most of the seats on the perimeter of the House chamber as Lowery and her aides offered assurances that teachers and professionals like librarians, counselors and nurses would not have their evaluations negatively impacted by student performance factors over which they have no control until more comprehensive planning occurs.
“This is a developmental year,” Lowery said of the assessment process. “We had no intention of walking into this year with a complete package.”
The assessment system is designed to measure performance in five areas: planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction, professional responsibilities and student improvement. While most of the details for the first four performance areas have been resolved, more work needs to be done on “Component 5,” the student improvement measurement, Lowery said.
For those who teach reading and/or math in grades 3-10, a portion of the teacher’s rating for student improvement will be based on improvement shown by their students in the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System (DCAS) reading and math exams. About 400 teachers of subjects not included in DCAS—social studies, science, music and art, for example—have been working with Department of Education specialists to develop appropriate measurement tools for their subjects, Lowery said.
Still to be determined are measurement standards for counselors, librarians and nurses, professionals who work outside the classroom and who do not teach subjects for which students are graded. “Selected members of these groups will also work with Department of Education specialists to develop measurement tools,” Lowery said.
Lowery and her aides made no mention of any 2012 legislative priorities at Wednesday’s hearing. Those will have to wait until Gov. Markell delivers his 2012 State of the State address, said Lisa Bishop, Lowery’s special assistant. That address is this Thursday, January 19.