Senators reported hearing that new teacher evaluations were costing too much time and money, and so they made a few changes. But House Republicans, including Speaker Bill Batchelder, weren’t happy.
“Most of the school districts have done one appraisal at this point," Batchelder said. "And when you start out by changing the rules, it’s probably not helpful.”
The House changed the Senate’s changes. So Senators put their original evaluation change bill into the governor’s education budget update, which threatened that bill’s passage.
Lawmakers have now compromised on evaluating top-rated teachers every three years instead of every two, and they’ve agreed that student growth will be 42.5 percent of an evaluation, essentially splitting the differences in the percentages they wanted.
The changes were added to a bill related to STEM schools, and that clears the way for the education budget update to come out of committee.
