Please follow and like us:

“A Concerned New Mexico Parent” sent me yet another blog entry for you all to stay apprised of the ongoing “situation” in New Mexico and the continuous escapades of the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED). See “A Concerned New Mexico Parent’s” prior posts here, here, and here, but in this one (s)he writes what follows:

Well, the NMPED is at it again.

They just released the teacher evaluation results for the 2015-2016 school year. And, the report and media press releases are a something.

Readers of this blog are familiar with my earlier documentation of the myriad varieties of scoring formulas used by New Mexico to evaluate its teachers. If I recall, I found something like 200 variations in scoring formulas [see his/her prior post on this here with an actual variation count at n=217].

However, a recent article published in the Albuquerque Journal indicates that, now according to the NMPED, “only three types of test scores are [being] used in the calculation: Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC], end-of-course exams, and the [state’s new] Istation literacy test.” [Recall from another article released last January that New Mexico’s Secretary of Education Hanna Skandera is also the head of the governing board for the PARCC test].

Further, the Albuquerque Journal article author reports that the “PED also altered the way it classifies teachers, dropping from 107 options to three. Previously, the system incorporated many combinations of criteria such as a teacher’s years in the classroom and the type of standardized test they administer.”

The new state-wide evaluation plan is also available in more detail here. Although I should also add that there has been no published notification of the radical changes in this plan. It was just simply and quietly posted on NMPED’s public website.

Important to note, though, is that for Group B teachers (all levels), the many variations documented previously have all been replaced by end-of-course (EOC) exams. Also note that for Group A teachers (all levels) the percentage assigned to the PARCC test has been reduced from 50% to 35%. (Oh, how the mighty have fallen …). The remaining 15% of the Group A score is to be composed of EOC exam scores.

There are only two small problems with this NMPED simplification.

First, in many districts, no EOC exams were given to Group B teachers in the 2015-2016 school year, and none were given in the previous year either. Any EOC scores that might exist were from a solitary administration of EOC exams three years previously.

Second, for Group A teachers whose scores formerly relied solely on the PARCC test for 50% of their score, no EOC exams were ever given.

Thus, NMPED has replaced their policy of evaluating teachers on the basis of students they don’t teach to this new policy of evaluating teachers on the basis of tests they never administered!

Well done, NMPED (not…)

Luckily, NMPED still cannot make any consequential decisions based on these data, again, until NMPED proves to the court that the consequential decisions that they would still very much like to make (e.g., employment, advancement and licensure decisions) are backed by research evidence. I know, interesting concept…