Skandera presents potential teacher eval system fixes to lawmakers
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Public Education Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera speaks Monday at the Legislative Education Study Committee’s meeting at the Capitol. Matthew Montaño, director of the Education Quality Division of the Public Education Department, attended the meeting with Skandera. Clyde Mueller/The New Mexican
Posted: Monday, November 17, 2014 7:30 pm | Updated: 11:00 am, Tue Nov 18, 2014.
The state’s Public Education Department, acknowledging problems with collecting and interpreting data for the new teacher evaluation system, told the Legislative Education Study Committee that it has established measures to address those challenges.
But some on the committee, including Republican Sen. Gay Kernan of Hobbs, would still like to see the state decrease the percentage of student measurements, including test scores, used to make up 50 percent of that evaluation.
“It’s not terribly out of line for us to consider that,” Kernan told Public Education Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera during the committee’s meeting Monday. Kernan, a supporter of the system and Gov. Susana Martinez, has been more vocal over the past few months in articulating her concerns about using student test data.
Skandera indicated the department will not compromise on that issue.
Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, said the 50 percent quota is a “disservice” to teachers. Stewart expressed concern that the state, in adopting the Common Core Standards, will now administer Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, tests online for the first time and that the state’s students are unlikely to perform well on them this year.
“We don’t score very well historically, and we’re not going to in the near future,” Stewart said, suggesting that poor student outcomes will hurt teacher evaluations.
While committee chairman Sen. John Sapien, D-Corrales, did not allow Skandera to respond to Stewart’s remark, Skandera later said, “I find it fundamentally offensive that anyone representing our state implies our students cannot do as well as other students. We completely disagree.”
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