State Releases New Teacher Evaluations, How Did Holmdel And Hazlet Schools Do?

By JASON KOESTENBLATT and MICHELLE SAHN (Patch Staff)

July 16, 2015

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.

At least 78.9 percent of Holmdel’s 213 teachers and 16.6 percent of Hazlet’s 259 teachers were deemed highly effective; at least 20.7 percent of Holmdel teachers and some 83.4 percent of Hazlet teachers were ranked effective. One Holmdel teacher was not included in the rankings.

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

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. From the DOE, regarding suppression:

1. Records that have n-size < 10 are suppressed, e.g., if 9 or fewer staff received a rating of Ineffective, the record will be suppressed (the record will not be part of the data file). The total will always be displayed irrespective of n-size.
2. When one performance level is suppressed due to n-size, and all 4 performance level ratings are present, the next lowest staff count will be suppressed (record will not be part of the file), to disallow roll-up to find the rating count for the first level suppressed and thus potentially identify educators.
3. Records with 100% 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.”

For schools, the data showed:

Holmdel

• Holmdel High School Effective 14 Highly Effective 66 Total 80
• William R. Satz School Highly Effective 39 Total 46
• Indian Hill School Highly Effective 46 Total 55
• Village School Effective 18 Highly Effective 32 Total 50
• District Total TEACHERS Effective 44 Highly Effective 168 Total 213

Hazlet

• 
  
• Raritan High School Effective 73 Total 81
• Beers Street School Effective 20 Total 26
• Cove Road School Effective 22 Total 24
• Lillian Drive School Effective 23 Total 26
• Middle Road School Effective 17 Total 26
• Raritan Valley School Effective 18 Highly Effective 10 Total 28
• Sycamore Drive Early Childhood Learning Center Effective 19 Total 25
• Hazlet Middle School Effective 47 Total 48
• District Total TEACHERS Effective 216 Highly Effective 43 Total 259

A total of 9 building administrators – principals, assistant principals, vice principals – were evaluated in the Holmdel school district and 12 were evaluated in Hazlet. All data submitted to the state was self-reported, meaning evaluations were done by administrators and colleagues inside each school building.

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.