March 21, 2012

• Teachers Measure the Growth of Their Students    
  
  Growth will be measured in one of two ways: Value-Added Data or by establishing Student Learning Targets (SLTs).
  
  
  Value-Added Data compares students' actual performance on tests to their expected performance, based on prior achievement history and other individual factors listed below. This means the specific challenges of students that are out of a teacher's control are taken into account when determining how much a teacher accomplished with each student. For the 2012-13 school year, teachers in grades 3-8 who teach ELA, math, science, or social studies, as well as high school Algebra I and Geometry teachers (about 36 percent of the state's teachers), will have value-added information that can be used to establish the student growth component of their evaluations.
  
  
  The Value-Added Model considers the following factors when identifying expectations for student growth:
   

• Available prior achievement data (up to three years);
• Gifted status;
• 504 status;
• Attendance;
• Disability status;
• Free and reduced meal eligibility;
• Limited English proficiency;
• Prior discipline history;
• Classroom composition variables.


For all other teachers, growth will be based on Student Learning Targets, a numerical goal set by administrators and teachers, representing what students should learn over the course of the semester or year. To aid educators in establishing goals, the LDOE will publish a list of common assessments that may be used by districts to measure students' progress towards targets.  Districts may also opt to select other assessments that clearly depict valid measures of student learning. The LDOE will also publish guidance on how to develop strong goals, but most important is that the principal, assistant principal, dean, department chair, master teacher or other veteran educator sets a rigorous but reasonable target with the teacher to help define success for students.

• Administrators Meet with Teachers to Review Observations and Student Growth  
  
  
  At the end of the year, each teacher will receive a final score that combines the data portion and observation portion of his or her evaluation. For each teacher on his or her staff, a principal or other administrator will assign the final evaluation score for both components: observations and student learning data. These scores are then averaged to determine the teacher's overall rating. In instances where a teacher is rated ineffective in either category, the teacher will receive an overall ineffective rating.
  
  The Louisiana Department of Education has trained more than 1,300 administrators on the Compass model. The first series of statewide teacher webinars starts this week. To participate, please register via Coursewhere at http://tinyurl.com/7n6yoqr. Compass for Teachers is listed under the Educator Effectiveness category.
  
  For more information on Compass, please click here. Comments may be submitted to compass@la.gov.

Regarding Current Legislation

Common Core State Standards

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted the national Common Core State Standards in the summer of 2010. The Common Core defines the knowledge and skills students should acquire at every grade level to graduate from high school prepared to succeed in their post-secondary education and workforce pursuits.  The English Language Arts (ELA) and math standards were designed in collaboration with teachers and school administrators and have been adopted by 44 other states, the District of Columbia, and two territories.

As part of our plan to fully transition to the to the Common Core Standards by the 2014-2015 school year, our state will begin using a set of transitional Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) to guide instruction and assessment in the 2012-2013 school year.  These identified GLEs represent only those that overlap with the Common Core.  Many GLEs not represented in the Common Core have been eliminated, others have been modified to better align with the Common Core, and others have not been adjusted at all.  For more details, including an explanation of which GLEs have been deleted, adjusted, or unchanged, please click here for ELA, and here for math.

Over the course of the next several months, the focus of the LDOE around the standards will be providing training to support district administrators, principals, and teachers to enrich their understanding of the Common Core and how the new standards will impact instruction.  In some cases, access to trainings may be restricted in an effort to target technical information to appropriate district and school level staff.

• Beginning this week, the LDOE will begin offering Regional Training Workshops to four-member district-level teams, who will redeliver the training to teachers in their district.  The workshops will feature information on the new Kindergarten and Grade 1 ELA and math standards. 
• The most extensive training will occur this summer.  Through 44 one-day sessions in six statewide locations, three-member teams from each school - an administrator, ELA specialist or teacher, and math specialist or teacher - will be trained to effectively support the instructional changes necessitated by the transition to the CCSS. These trainings will be organized to accommodate each school level, elementary, middle, and high school, and will be held on June 4-7 and July 9-12.  The school-level teams will redeliver this information to their colleagues.
• Also, district-level staff will begin training on how to use Louisiana's new Common Core-Aligned Comprehensive Curriculum for ELA and math (kindergarten and 1st Grade) during four sessions:  June 5-7; June 12-14; June 19-21; and June 26-28.

Please look for more information on Louisiana's implementation of the Common Core in future issues of Ed·Connect. In the meantime, for more detailed information on the standards, please visit here.