Superintendents are more concerned about the workload associated with new state data collection requirements than they are about publicly sharing the data itself.
Rob Winslow, the executive director of the Idaho Association of School Administrators, met with his board members on a Tuesday morning conference call and discussed new reporting requirements related to teacher evaluations.
“It’s doable,” Winslow said. “They’d like an explanation about the collection process.”
The State Board of Education last week voted to require school and district leaders to collect and report the following data points, effective immediately:
- A teacher’s annual evaluation rating (data that is already collected).
- The number of components on an evaluation scored as “unsatisfactory.”
- A yes-no response to the question of whether a majority of a teacher’s students met their achievement targets.
- A list of the tool (or tools) used to measure student achievement or success.
- A yes-no response as to whether the teacher has an individualized professional learning plan.
“These are things they can produce,” Winslow said. “All that information is already part of an evaluation, so it might not be that huge of an issue.”
State Superintendent Sherri Ybarra debated against the new collection requirement during last week’s State Board meeting. She cast the lone dissenting vote, but the rule passed, 7-1.
Ybarra said the data collection would be a burden on local districts, and she said she doesn’t see value in the data.
But Marilyn Whitney, Gov. Butch Otter’s education liaison, said the data is valuable because it is directly tied to the career ladder, Idaho’s $250 million plan to increase teacher salaries. State Board members said lawmakers are asking for more data to track teachers’ movement up and down the career ladder.
Administrators are more concerned with the logistics of the data collection.
“What I’m hearing is ‘what kind of time does it take?’ since it’s another step,” Winslow said. “But I don’t see this as problematic.”
