Review of Teacher Evaluation System Unlikely to Surprise: Huffman

A review of the Tennessee’s controversial new system for evaluating teachers is due out in the next couple of weeks. The state’s top education official doubts it will bring many surprises.

The new evaluation system has drawn sharp criticism from teachers because it takes an above-average score just to maintain tenure. And principals have complained it eats up too much time to evaluate every teacher four times a year in 19 categories.

The people reviewing the new system say they’ve gathered thousands of comments. Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman expects they’ve heard much the same thing as his department.

“We’ve talked to thousands of teachers and had hundreds and hundreds of emails and thousands of questions and so on. So I don’t think that anything we’ll hear will be a big surprise.”

The governor called for an outside opinion on the evaluation system several months ago, while discouraging lawmakers from meddling with it this spring. Now the legislature has left for the year, and Commissioner Huffman says some recommended changes could instead be handled internally.

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The review is being conducted by SCORE, a group founded by former U.S. Senator Bill Frist to push for educational change.

The new evaluation system has been crucial to Tennessee’s winning half a billion dollars from the federal Race to the Top program, and getting a waiver from the unpopular No Child Left Behind law.