Federal officials: Arizona must defend teacher-evaluation system

Waiver from national rules hangs in balance

The U.S. Department of Education has threatened action against Arizona’s schools unless the state can prove that it has an acceptable teacher-evaluation system that uses students’ test scores as part of the rating.

John Huppenthal, state superintendent of public instruction, said last week that Arizona already is ahead of other states in its teacherevaluation system and that federal officials are requiring a one-size-fitsall-approach.

In a letter sent last week, federal officials told the state Department of Education that Arizona must meet certain conditions before it can pursue a waiver for next year from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, formerly known as No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001 to help students in Title I schools, which serve low-income students.

If Arizona loses its waiver for next year, it will be subject to the rules of No Child Left Behind. Under that system, underperforming schools face restrictive — and, some say, ineffective — rules to improve, including an emphasis on replacing staff.

To acquire a waiver, states have to meet several criteria, including adopting Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards, formerly known as Common Core, creating a school letter-grade ranking system and developing teacher-evaluation systems that use student-achievement data. Arizona began that process in 2010 and received a waiver in 2012.

The waiver allows more flexibility in how the state spends federal money. Arizona has been able to direct its dollars toward the lowestperforming schools.

With the teacher evaluations, the state came up with a basic framework, requiring that one-third to onehalf of the rating be based on student data from Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards tests.

Beyond that, districts and charters were allowed to create their own assessments, using AIMS and other data, as well.

Public schools are required to have the evaluations in place for this year, and eventually, teachers’ performance pay will be tied to their scores.

The U.S. Department of Education wants a more uniform approach, based on annual assessments that measure how much students improve in their scores.

But Huppenthal said many districts have evaluations far superior to the type federal officials are requiring.

“We have school districts that have very elaborate teacher-evaluation systems in place that they worked out with the teachers, and they can measure weekly or month to month or on a quarterly basis,” Huppenthal said. “Our problem is that they are saying, ‘Use one test for everybody,’ and we’re saying that one test doesn’t provide you information during the year, it only provides you information in the summer, when the year is over, and that’s not the way to build a great school district.”

For example, the Scottsdale Unified School District created its own assessments in a wide variety of subjects, including art, music, physical education and other non-AIMS courses. Students take the assessments at the beginning and the end of the year, and the scores are part of the teacher’s evaluation.

Scottsdale’s model also solves the issue of how to evaluate teachers on non-AIMS subjects — another issue federal officials requested clarification on from Arizona.

Other districts purchased ready-made evaluations from outside vendors.

“Our framework was designed intentionally with flexibility in mind,” said Karla Phillips, director of cross-divisional initiatives with the state Department of Education. “We’re one or two years ahead of the rest of the country in implementation. For us, it’s whether we’ll change the rules midway.”

The Arizona department has 60 days to present a report to the U.S. Department of Education, proving that the state’s teacher evaluations are acceptable.

“We will sit down, grind it out and let the feds know that,” Huppenthal said. “And we have to figure out how to do it without creating a regulatory nightmare for our schools.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s letter also asked Arizona to provide more information on how it will use high-school graduation rates in its school letter grades.

Last year, the state increased the weight of graduation rates from 1.5 percent of schools’ grades to 15 percent.

Federal officials want it to be 20 percent.

Huppenthal said he believes accountability under the new College and Career Ready Standards, in place this year, will increase the state’s graduation rate — now at about 78 percent.

He added that simply demanding a higher graduation rate could devalue a diploma as high schools scramble to meet the threshold.

“To their credit, they have been listening to those arguments and have been open to them,” he said of the U.S. Department of Education, which has asked the state to provide more data on how the new standards will improve graduation rates.

PHOENIX — Jury selection is expected to wrap up today in the retrial of an Arizona man charged with killing nine people in 1991 at a Buddhist temple in Waddell.

Lawyers are expected to make opening statements Wednesday in Johnathan Doody’s retrial.

Heis accused of participating in the August 1991 slayings at the Wat Promkunaram temple in one of Arizona’s most notorious cases.

Doody was convicted in 1993 and sentenced to 281 years in prison, but an appeals court threw out his conviction in 2011 after ruling that investigators improperly obtained his confession.

Doody was put on trial again in August, but a judge declared a mistrial Oct. 24 after jurors failed to reach a verdict.