PIERRE, S.D. – The South Dakota Education Department hopes to once again ask lawmakers to remove a specific student learning requirement from the state’s teacher evaluation rules.
The legislative committee responsible for reviewing administrative rule changes rejected a similar attempt last year. The revision would remove a requirement that teacher performance evaluations include “student learning objectives,” which are student educational growth goals. The objectives are set by the teacher and school administration.
Department Secretary Joe Graves told the state Board of Education Standards at its Tuesday meeting that lawmakers rejected last year’s proposal because “they didn’t believe it was right to remove a portion of the overall evaluation that specifically addressed student growth.”
The evaluation as a whole still focuses on student growth, Graves added, and student growth is monitored outside of teacher evaluations, such as in standardized testing. The specific student growth piece of the evaluation has become “increasingly trite and meaningless,” Graves said.
“If I’m going to put a student learning objective in my evaluation, then I better find one that I’m pretty sure I can meet,” Graves said, adding that the standards weren’t “having the desired impact.”
The board voted to move ahead with a public hearing at its next meeting on July 7. Board President Steve Perkins, of Sioux Falls, was the sole vote against it, saying he’d like “to see another option presented” to the board and more time to study the issue.
If passed onto the legislative Interim Rules Review Committee and approved, school districts would still be able to implement student learning objectives in teacher evaluations if they want. It just won’t be a state requirement.
Incoming Tea Area School District Superintendent Tonia Warzecha told the board that setting and tracking student learning objectives was “time consuming” and “very rigorous” for teachers in her district.
When first implemented over a decade ago, teachers feared they’d lose their jobs if students didn’t meet their growth needs, Warzecha said. Many factors influencing a child’s ability to learn are outside a teacher’s control, she added.
Board member Phyllis Heineman said however the board moves forward, evaluations should retain “a strong student growth component.”
“I think we just need to be convinced,” Heineman said, “and help legislators be convinced that it’s still within that teacher evaluation – that there is some way that we’re connecting it to student growth.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been corrected after misattributing comments made by Tonia Warzecha.
