NJ Teacher Evaluations: How Manchester Fared

MANCHESTER, NJ — Nearly 99 percent of teachers in the Manchester Township School District have been judged as effective or highly effective, under information released by the state Department of Education last week.

The evaluations, based on a combination of student test scores, in-class observations, and goals teachers set for their students, were for the 2015-16 school year. The full list of school result can be downloaded here (it is an Excel spreadsheet).

According to the state DOE's AchieveNJ website, for teachers whose students are eligible to take the PARCC tests — fourth-graders through eighth-graders for language arts and fourth- through seventh-graders in math — 30 percent of a teacher’s overall evaluation rating is based on how that teacher's students fare on the tests. Another 55 percent is based on classroom observations, while 15 percent is based on the objectives set for students.

Teachers whose students do not fall into those categories (art and physical education, for instance) are evaluated with 85 percent of their grade coming from classroom observation and 15 percent from goals set for students, according to the website.

Teachers receive a rating of 1 through 4 in each category, and their overall effectiveness rating is calculated.
In Manchester, 147 of the district's 296 teachers received evaluations of effective, and 146 were evaluated as highly effective.

Here is the breakdown of the number of teachers rated effective and highly effective in each of the district's schools. An asterisk indicates fewer than 10 teachers received the ranking and the state suppressed those numbers. The categories for ineffective and partially effective were eliminated because in each school the numbers were fewer than 10 and thus marked by an asterisk.

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