FARMINGTON -- State education officials are studying new federal guidelines intended to ensure schools with the greatest numbers of poor and minority students have equitable access to excellent teachers and principals.
The guidelines proposed in regulations for the Every Student Succeeds Act would require the Arkansas Department of Education to report on the percentage of low-income and minority students who are taught by ineffective teachers, inexperienced teachers and teachers who are teaching outside their area of license, said Ivy Pfeffer, the department's assistant commissioner of human resources, licensure and educator effectiveness.
Public meeting
• Community Listening Forum for input on the state’s plan for schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015
• Begins at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Jones Center, 922 E. Emma St. in Springdale
• The Arkansas Department of Education officials will consider public comments in a plan for the Arkansas Accountability System. The department will submit the plan to the U.S. Department of Education for approval in the summer of 2017.
Source: Arkansas Department of Education
States, including Arkansas, are grappling with how to define ineffective teachers, Pfeffer said. She asked superintendents at the monthly board meeting at the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative on Thursday for input.
"Is it really the opposite of effective?" Pfeffer asked. "You might have someone whose less than effective, but not ineffective."
The reason a beginning teacher may not have the level of performance as 10-year veteran in the field may be because of her lack of experience and not because she's ineffective, said Randy Barrett, Gentry superintendent.
Barrett said trying to define an ineffective or effective teacher will require some measurement of whether students the teacher is teaching are learning.
The U.S. Department of Education is in the process of setting regulations for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act signed in 2015. It's the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
Arkansas is developing its school accountability plan, which will go to the U.S. Department of Education for approval in the summer of 2017, Pfeffer said. The department will seek public input through a series of forums.
Defining what it means to be an ineffective teacher is difficult because of the complex nature of teaching, Pfeffer said.
"Every student has a unique set of needs," she said. "A teacher is making thousands of decisions every day that impact multiple students. Not only do they have to know their content, but they have to be expert in the art of teaching. They've got to be very skilled at communicating with parents and with their administrators and with their colleagues."
The state's teacher evaluation system outlines what it takes to be an effective teacher, Pfeffer said. The system has four levels of performance. In 2015-16, 83 percent of teachers were considered proficient, 11 percent received the highest rating of distinguished, 4 percent were basic and less than 1 percent were unsatisfactory.
Charles Cudney, director of the cooperative, said the tendency will be for districts, parents and community members to let the definition of an effective teacher set the bar for what teachers work toward.
The discussion will have to consider whether the goal is for teachers to improve in their teacher evaluation or to get over an ineffective teacher hurdle, he said. He suggested working toward keeping the evaluation and the definition within the same system.
The worst solution will be repeated changes in the evaluation system, Cudney said.
NW News on 10/07/2016