TLE Commission approves recommendations to strengthen evaluations

OKLAHOMA CITY (Feb. 19, 2015) — The Teacher & Leader Effectiveness (TLE) Commission today voted unanimously to approve several recommended changes in an effort to have a more valid and reliable framework for teacher and leader evaluation.

Key recommendations include delaying implementation of TLE’s quantitative component for two years and eliminating the SLOs (Student Learning Objectives) / SOOs (Student Outcome Objectives) as a proxy for Value-Added Models (VAMs).

The proposal to delay the quantitative component is in legislation authored by state Sen. John Ford, who chairs the Senate Education Committee and is on the 11-member TLE Commission.

“This marks the first of several steps to ensure Oklahoma’s TLE framework is built on strong research and reliable measures,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister. “Our focus is on professional development for teachers and leaders that translate into greater results for children.”

The full recommendations passed include:

• Report quantitative measures, as available, to teachers and leaders for information purposes only until 2016-2017. Begin using quantitative measures for evaluation purposes, as available, beginning 2017-2018.
• Keep five-tier rating system of qualitative.
• Allow for separate reporting of multiple measures — no composite score or weight system required.
• Keep high-quality quantitative measures
  --Keep value-added, where available
  --Eliminate OAMs (Other Academic Measures) and develop alternatives that will be recommended to local school districts that are reliable, research-based and an actionable measure correlated to growth in student achievement or engagement.
• Allow school districts the ability to define in their board policies, using qualitative and quantitative measures as available, when/how a teacher is deemed “effective” for purposes of automatic career status, or “ineffective/needs improvement” for mandatory exiting purposes.
• Eliminate OAM menu and SLOs/SOOs and study alternatives. (State Board of Education policy)

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