House Ed kills bill aimed at clearing up teacher evaluation confusion

The House Education Committee killed one of the first proposed new education bills of the session Wednesday, aimed at clearing up confusion over teacher evaluations. Committee members voted 11-4 against introducing the bill, Idaho EdNews reports. Officials with the State Board of Education brought the proposed bill, saying annual reviews of teacher evaluation data and documents revealed discrepancies in how school districts maintain the files associated with teacher evaluations.

“In some cases, the school district didn’t fully understand what that requirement was,” said Tracie Bent, the State Board’s chief planning and policy officer, according to EdNews reporter Clark Corbin. The one-page bill would have added one sentence to existing law: “Relevant material shall include such documents necessary to provide evidence of meeting the evaluation requirements established in the state evaluation framework.”

Rep. Ryan Kerby, R-New Plymouth, led opposition to introducing the new evaluations bill. Kerby told Bent that he wanted her to explain how the proposed new bill would improve student learning. “Are our kids going to really learn more by piling more administration on the schools?” Kerby asked, according to Corbin’s report.

Kerby himself is no stranger to the evaluations controversy, Corbin writes. In 2017, a state agency called the Professional Standards Commission and a hearing panel of his peers ordered that an official letter of reprimand be placed in Kerby’s personnel file for submitting incomplete teacher evaluations . The PSC and the review panel found that Kerby violated state law and his code of ethics by not factoring student achievement into teacher evaluations, as required by law, hen he served as New Plymouth’s school superintendent. Kerby and the SDE also butted heads in 2016, when Kerby argued forcibly in an Idaho EdNews opinion piece that the state did not request documented classroom observations be included in evaluations reports. You can read Corbin’s full report online here .