Galloway Superintendent Explains Changes as District Moves Beyond "No Child Left Behind"

Following the federal government’s decision to grant New Jersey a from the No Child Left Behind Act, Galloway Township Superintendent of Schools Dr. Annette Giaquinto explained there would be new guidelines to evaluate students and teachers during a presentation to the Board of Education at its meeting Monday night, April 23 at the

To cover the cost of purchasing and implementing a teacher evaluation model, the Galloway Township School District accepted $35,876 in federal Race to the Top 3 funding. The State of New Jersey applied for the grant and allowed individual school districts to apply for the funding.

To that end, the school district will be conducting an in-house pilot program for teachers next year. 

“Teacher evaluations are based on effectiveness, practices and clear expectations,” Giaquinto said. “There are multiple measures of teacher practices and student performance.”

According to the presentation, teacher evaluations will be based on a combination of student achievement and teacher practice.

Student achievement is based on a combination of student growth on state assessment testing, a school wide performance measure and other performance measures.

The teacher practice is determined by a combination of classroom observations and other measures of practices.

Teachers will be divided into two groups for observation for the 2012-13 school year: core content area teachers and non-core content area teachers. Core content areas include language arts, math, science, the arts and social studies.

The frequency in evaluations would generally be higher for core content area teachers, and would be a mix of announced and unannounced formal evaluations, evaluations from an external observer and varying lengths of observation.

The highest number is five announced formal observations for tenured core content area teachers and four announced formal observations for non-tenured core content area teachers. Non-core content area teachers who are tenured would be observed three times, and those who are not tenured would be observed twice.

In the past, there were no unannounced observations, observations by external observers and double scored observations. There will now be two unannounced observations for tenured and non-tenured core content area teachers and one for tenured and non-tenured non-core content area teachers.

The same numbers apply for external observations.

Tenured and non-tenured core content area teachers will have one double scored observation, while non-core content area teachers are still not required to undergo observations.

Giaquinto said the changes in evaluation would mean a realignment of how administrators spend their time during the school day.

She said a median test history would be applied to all teachers.

“For example, a teacher with a median 205 will be compared to other teachers with the same median score,” Giaquinto said.

Because teacher evaluations and student achievement will be linked so closely together, Board Member Beverly Evensen inquired about the possibility of moving entire classes intact from grade level to grade level.

“We have not discussed moving an entire class, but we will have staff ID numbers” that will be connected to current students’ ID numbers, Giaquinto said.

Board President Ernest Huggard had reservations about whether or not the system would work.
“Given the cost and the minutes required, I hope there’s someway to track accountability,” Huggard said.

Giaquinto said the school system is required to have an electronic monitoring device that will cost $35,000 to purchase, adding that the state won’t accept an answer of a district not having enough money to afford the mandated program.

“The state is giving us two years to get it done,” Giaquinto said.

She said the district would begin looking for participants in a Dsitrict Advisory Team this week.