State Releases New Teacher Evaluations: How Did Cinnaminson Fare?

Under a new teacher and administrator evaluation system in the state of New Jersey, educators in the 2013-14 were graded on a scale of four measures.

Results were released by the state Wednesday, and in Cinnaminson, the question wasn’t whether local teachers performed or were ineffective. Rather, it was a matter of how well they performed.

Teachers in each school were ranked on a four-level scaled, from ineffective, to partially ineffective, to effective, to highly effective as part of the new AchieveNJ evaluation system.

The DOE did not release names, grades or subjects taught, only providing overall numbers. Also, because the disclosure of evaluation data of any particular employee is, by law, completely confidential, discrepancies in the overall numbers will be seen. The Department of Education calls this its suppression rate, meaning it won’t release the figures of specific categories of educators. If a category has less than 10 teachers, that number was not included. The next lowest category is also not included, to prevent roll-up to find the rating count for the first level suppressed and thus potentially identify educators. Finally, records with 100 percent of staff in one performance level are suppressed, as per state law (since in this case, any viewer would know each educator’s evaluation rating). In such cases, only the total staff count record will be provided as part of the data file.”

The evaluations showed:

• Cinnaminson High School: 29 effective, 38 highly effective, 67 total teachers
• Cinnaminson Middle School: 35 effective, 19 highly effective, 55 total teachers
• New Albany: 19 effective, 14 highly effective, 33 total teachers
• Eleanor Rush: 22 effective, 19 highly effective, 41 total teachers
• District Totals: 105 effective, 90 highly effective, 196 total teachers

A total of seven building administrators – principals, assistant principals, vice principals – were evaluated in the school district, but those results were not disclosed.

The majority of teachers across the state evaluated well, the DOE reported, but there were still a percentage of teachers that would need further training or changes in their instruction techniques.

According to the report, some 2,900 teachers – providing instruction to more than 180,000 students that school year – across the state were considered ineffective or partially effective, the state noted. As a result of those ratings, AchieveNJ requires those teachers to receive extra support and demonstrate progress over time to earn or maintain tenure, the report said.

“The real story of the first year of AchieveNJ,” said Peter Shulman, Assistant Commissioner of Education and Chief Talent Officer in a press release, “is that educators have risen to the challenge of improving feedback for all teachers and leaders. While one year of this new data is insufficient for identifying sustained trends or making sweeping conclusions about the state’s teaching staff, we are proud of this significant improvement and the personalized support all educators are now receiving.”

See the rankings of every school in the state here.