State education officials are trying to figure out what will happen to thousands of teacher evaluations. Those evaluations are used to determine how much a teacher will be paid and whether they can keep their jobs. An administrative law judge has said the state failed to follow proper rulemaking procedures. And that means last year’s evaluations could be invalid.
The judge in the case says the Department of Education failed to include key information in published rules governing teacher evaluations. The challenge was brought by the Florida Education Association, a teachers union, and two teachers. FEA attorney Tony Demma says DOE also exceeded its authority in writing out what districts could and couldn’t include in those evaluations:
“You’ve got a document within a document. And you’ve got to go to the second document to figure out what the first one means…In our view, they basically wrote everyone’s evaluation plan for them.”
Other challenges to the merit pay law are still moving in the courts.
The Florida Department of Education and Commissioner Gerard Robinson released the following statement:
“The final order issued on August 22, 2012, addresses the format of the rule, not the substance. The rule was developed to be clear and so that the Department is held accountable for all source documents that could be used by districts to implement meaningful personnel evaluations; however, the order indicated that the rule needed to be formatted differently to meet technical requirements of rule making. While that revision process is underway, districts will continue to implement and improve upon the ground-breaking and collaborative evaluation systems they put in place last year based on Race to the Top and the Student Success Act. We will continue to work with educators and education stakeholders to finalize this procedural rule.”
