House Would Make Educators Majority of Evaluation Committee

The governor’s “Race to the Top” education legislation is due to go to the state Senate floor Friday morning. The House version emerged from the Education Committee Thursday afternoon with a few changes.

A key point in the measure is a requirement that student achievement make up half of a teacher’s evaluation. The job of determining just how that should work would belong to a 15 member committee.

Dresden Democrat Mark Maddox, authored a House amendment requiring that a majority of the committee be made up of teachers and principals.

“I wanted to make sure we had people who had been in front of classrooms and had been evaluated by the present instrument, and people who had been in the back of the classrooms watching and using that evaluation instrument, on that committee, because this to me is the most important factor of what we’ve just done.”

House sponsor Mike Turner says most of the differences can be ironed out in time to pass the bill by Tuesday. That’s when the application for almost half a Billion dollars in federal education funds is due.