Schools are able to hire stronger teachers when economy is weak, study finds

A weak economy appears to have at least one upside: Schools are able to hire more effective teachers, according to new research. Teachers hired during recessions were significantly more effective, as judged by their students’ performance on standardized tests, than teachers hired during better economic times, according to working paper published this week by the…

Florida Board of Education sets new rules for many teacher evaluations

Through 2014-15, Florida school district had the ability to set teacher evaluation ratings the student performance results they received. That flexibility no longer exists for the teachers of classes that include state tests. The Florida Board of Education on Thursday adopted a new rule connecting value-added model results to evaluation rankings, from highly effective through…

State Board Of Education Sets New Goals For Some Teacher Evaluations

The State Board of Education has approved a new statewide standard for the test-based portion of teacher evaluations. State law requires that teachers are evaluated each year. That evaluation must include how well that teacher’s students performed on standardized exams — and whether they did better or worse than expected, based on a complex statistical formula. That formula…

Teachers remain wary even as Florida eases its stance on evaluations

In their effort to tie teachers’ job evaluations to student performance, Florida lawmakers acknowledge they initially went too far. “We were trying to prove a point, and we became overprescriptive,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman John Legg, who began pressing the issue five years ago. This spring, comfortable that the idea of increased accountability for…