Borough BOE Discusses Statewide Initiatives

Online student assessment and statewide teacher evaluations will be implemented in New Jersey school districts by 2015, according to Freehold Borough School District Superintendent Elizabeth O’Connell.

O’Connell presented a report on statewide initiatives to the Board of Education during its meeting on Monday, Oct. 10 at the Freehold Learning Center. New Jersey students will take computerized assessments through Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College & Careers (PARCC) by the 2014-2015 school year, with pilot testing beginning in 2012, O’Connell told board members.

The new testing and data collection platform will coincide with the development of the teacher evaluation initiative, Excellent Educators for New Jersey (EE4NJ). Ten school districts in the state, including Red Bank, are participating in an EE4NJ pilot project to develop measurement tools and an evaluation framework for teachers, O'Connell said.

“Fifty percent of the teacher’s evaluation will be based on the student’s achievement and 50 percent will be based on teacher practice. Student achievement will be tied into the new PARCC system,” O’Connell said.

School-wide performance and additional measures established by the district will factor into teacher evaluation, she noted. Several board members questioned how the teacher evaluation system will ultimately factor into the operations of the district.

“If a teacher fares poorly, is the teacher remediated, fired, or do they lose tenure?” Board member Dr. Michael Lichardi asked.

Specific actions against teachers who underperform in the new evaluation system have not been established, according to O’Connell. She noted that student standardized test scores will be looked at differently, with an emphasis placed on whether or not a student is on a trajectory that shows educational improvement.

“Teachers are not going to be evaluated negatively if he or she has low performing students. It’s how they actually perform on the test—was there growth?” O’Connell said.

The district is currently researching what technology it will need to purchase to implement PARCC testing in the coming years, the superintendent said.