I used to tell my students in Statistics class that half of them were below average. Since we were doing stats, that really hit home.
Here’s an idea: Idaho teachers in a school should be ranked so that half are below average.
BOISE — Nearly 99 percent of Idaho’s teachers earned top marks on their evaluations from the most recent school year, the highest rate since legislators tied pay to performance.
According to data released by the State Board of Education, 19,063 out of 19,361 educators evaluated received one of the top two overall evaluation scores for the 2019-20. That corresponds to about 98.5 percent of all evaluations.
A year ago, 98.1 percent of all evaluations earned one of the top two scores.
There are four possible scores a teacher could earn: unsatisfactory, basic, proficient or distinguished.
Statewide 27 teachers earned overall scores of unsatisfactory while 271 teachers earned scores of basic. That’s out of a pool of almost 20,000 educators.
The 98.5 percent proficient and distinguished rating was the highest in the six years that Idaho Education News has compiled and tracked teacher evaluation data.
Teacher evaluations are increasingly high stakes in Idaho because the Legislature tied a teacher’s ability to earn a raise by moving up the career ladder salary system to performance on evaluations.
By law, all teachers must receive an evaluation every year and student achievement is required to factor into the score.