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 teachers had taken hold, the Legislature eased up.
It cut the amount that test scores would count toward evaluations, giving school systems the option to add other indicators to the mix. It also dropped the requirement that every course in every grade level have a written end-of-course exam, a mandate that was to take effect this spring.
