Teacher evaluations within reach

At least as far as reforms in teacher evaluations are concerned, the ball has now landed back where it belongs: in the court of the state Department of Education and its overseers.

This means the state Board of Education and the man who appointed its members, Gov. Neil Abercrombie, are now on the hot seat to fulfill promises for greater accountability among teachers to the academic growth of their students.

On Tuesday, lawmakers rejected a measure that would have put the force of law behind the drive to revamp teacher evaluations along the lines that the DOE has proposed in its $75 million, federally funded Race to the Top reforms initiative.

The hope among advocates in the state Senate was that the backing of a state mandate would have dispatched a message to federal education officials that Hawaii was serious about reform.

And, in the wake of a site visit by a U.S. Department of Education team, that may have boosted Hawaii’s chances of having its grant taken off at-risk status, where it’s languished for months.

That may have had some effect, but it would send a far stronger signal for the state officials tied most closely to the issue — the DOE top brass, the BOE and Abercrombie — get the job done without the legislative boot applied.

Five days after Senate Bill 2789 emerged from the House Finance Committee, a vote on the floor recommitted the measure to the committee, effectively killing it for the session.

The draft that they ultimately shelved put the onus on the BOE to implement a "comprehensive system of educational accountability."

It also got more specific than previous versions in spelling out some minimal performance indicators that would be used as measures of student growth, such as high school completion and graduation rates, rates of students entering and persisting in postsecondary education and training and the number of graduates that met benchmarks for college and career readiness.

The governor testified in favor of a previous version, which took into account new BOE policies pressing for the evaluation but directed the BOE "to establish the specific implementation parameters for that policy direction."

For example, he said, it would have required "that student learning be a ‘significant factor’ in educator evaluation but relies on BOE policy to establish the weight."

Teacher representatives have pushed back against the legislation throughout the session.

Testimony by Wil Okabe, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, contended that the evaluation system must be developed by educators and is subject to collective bargaining, not a state mandate.

The HSTA has taken issue also with the BOE policy because, Okabe said, it considers probationary teachers as "at will" employees. The union leadership also is worried that the DOE will end up with standardized assessments as the sole indicator of student achievement.

These concerns should not be insurmountable. And although incorporating student achievement measures in teacher evaluations is still a work in progress nationwide, Hawaii needs to make a start at improving the evaluation system it now has.

Further, the union should take the accord the administration has struck with the Hawaii Government Employees Association over similar changes to principals’ evaluations as a sign of the state’s resolve on this issue.

DOE officials also have reaffirmed their pledge to expand a pilot program to test new evaluations, with no consequences to teachers, and that’s a welcome signal, too.

Considering that there’s been a state law for eight years requiring new principals’ evaluations, with no progress until now, maybe the importance of a mandate has been oversold. What’s important is that the people in charge pick up that ball in their court, and run with it now.