The Houston school board's effort to overhaul how teachers are evaluated faces a challenge from the district's largest union, which is threatening to file a state complaint if trustees don't agree on Thursday to slow the changes.
Gayle Fallon, the president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said she is prepared to ask the Texas education commissioner to invalidate the new appraisal but will hold off if the board decides to test the system at some schools next year, rather than roll it out districtwide.
The proposed evaluation would reverse the two-decade-old system of principals grading teachers based mostly on a single visit to their classroom and would thrust the Houston Independent School District into a small but growing national movement to hold educators more responsible for students' academic progress.
Under HISD's plan, teachers would be observed at least four times, receive regular advice from their appraiser, and their students' scores on standardized tests generally would count for about half their rating.
"It's going to be a huge change," Fallon said. "Without enough time to train over 10,000 teachers and 1,000 assessors, it is a recipe for chaos."
Teacher input questioned
HISD is among the few districts in Texas to try to veer from the state-approved evaluation. But teachers across the Lone Star State could see changes to their appraisals under two bills pending in the Legislature. The leaders of the House and Senate education committees have proposed revamping the state's teacher evaluation system to include student test scores.
"Basically we're looking at teacher effectiveness as the key to school improvement," said House Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands. "Not a lot of the appraisal systems focus on student achievement and currently what we're doing isn't really getting us the desired results on teacher quality."
Fallon and Chuck Robinson, who heads another employee group, the Congress of Houston Teachers, both question whether teachers had as much input into the new HISD evaluation system as Texas law requires. Districts can use an appraisal that differs from the state plan but it must be "developed by" committees that include teachers and parents.
Ellen Hur, a partner with The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group working with HISD on the evaluation process, says the district included more than 2,600 teachers as well as administrators, parents and community members in designing the appraisal during the past six months, though no votes were taken.
"I can tell you with full confidence that this system you're seeing now was not cooked up in some room at (the district's central office) Hattie Mae White or bought off some shelf," Hur said. "Every piece of feedback - and there were thousands - was recorded and considered to build this system."
Evaluating test scores
Every teacher will be judged on two measures of student performance - generally test scores, but projects might be considered in classes such as art. The other main categories are the teacher's instructional techniques, such as the ability to engage students, and professionalism.
The criteria causing the most concern from union leaders is the use of a specific model of analyzing test scores, the same one used to decide which HISD teachers get performance bonuses.
The value-added model developed by North Carolina statistician William Sanders uses complex statistics to determine whether each student scored better or worse than expected on standardized tests, based on his or her past results.
Only teachers in core subjects such as math and science in grades three through eight have value-added scores. Those without them will be rated on other test scores, generally focused on whether students improved.
The district also is working on a new evaluation for principals that also is expected to launch next school year.
HISD's efforts to redo its evaluation system, as well as to overhaul teacher recruitment, retention and training, have drawn donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation.
The district has a $2.3 million contract with The New Teacher Project to assist on the projects, with the district contributing an initial $50,000 payment, according to HISD. "The nation is looking at us," HISD board vice president Manuel Rodriguez Jr. said.
ericka.mellon@chron.com
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