AYER/SHIRLEY — Students are not the only ones being transitioned into a new assessment system.
As part of the new Educator Evaluation Framework (EEF), all licensed educators will soon receive a summative evaluation rating and an impact on student learning rating based on new criteria.
According to Ayer-Shirley Regional School District Superintendent Carl Mock, the next phase of the EEF requires educators to begin identifying and implementing District-Determined Measures (DDMs) of student growth, which must be developed for all licensed teachers in all grades and subjects, as well as for all administrators.
Starting next year, for those teachers who teach ELA and math in MCAS-tested grades, one of these DDMs must measure trends in their students’ Student Growth Percentiles (SGP). EEF regulations state that a trend for both SGP and other DDMs must consist of at least two years of data.
“For those teachers who have either ELA or math Student Growth Percentiles, that will be one of two DDMs that will be used to determine whether or not a teacher has low, moderate or high impact on student learning,” Mock explained.
The second measure must be locally developed or identified assessments of growth, such as portfolios, performance assessments, locally created pre- and post-tests or textbook-based assessments.
“What may happen is that the kids that we exempt from taking MCAS this year, when those kids go to another teacher, the following year that teacher would not have an MCAS Student Growth Percentile because she would inherit a class that had not taken the MCAS in third grade,” Mock said.
Those students who may be exempt are the Page Hilltop Elementary third-graders randomly selected to field test the new performance-based assessment known as PARCC.
The problem could be alleviated, Mock said, by ensuring that those students are “spread out” the following year.
The goal of PARCC, he said, is to have the data from the testing available to participating schools (representing two-thirds of Massachusetts public school districts) by the end of school year.
That, he said, is much faster than the MCAS, the results of which do not come in until schools are well into the following school year.
“So that is an advantage to have the information over the summer,” he concluded.
