Elizabeth Bewley - WBIR News -
 
WASHINGTON - Tennessee's new teacher evaluation system will give educators frequent feedback on their performance and will dismiss those whose failings can't be fixed with training, state Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman told House lawmakers Wednesday.
 
The state's approach also will promote the techniques of the best teachers, Huffman told members of the House education committee.
 
He acknowledged the new method remains a "work in progress."
 "One of our great national failings in the discussion about teacher evaluation is that we consistently allow ourselves to be derailed through the unattainable concept of a perfect system," Huffman said.
 
Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, hailed Tennessee's system as one of the best in the country, noting that most states don't require annual evaluations of veteran teachers, and many grant tenure to teachers without considering their effectiveness.
 
"No school-based factor is more important in determining (students') achievement gains than their teachers - not class size, not access to technology, not per-student spending," she told lawmakers.
 
Yet even as government spending per student has increased an average 2.6 percent each year over the last four decades, little of that money has been directed at improving teacher quality through methods such as better evaluation, higher pay or stronger recruiting efforts, she said.
 
Under Tennessee's system, to launch in the upcoming school year, teachers will receive an evaluation score ranging from one to five.
 Thirty-five percent of that score will be determined by students' performance on testing under the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System. Fifteen percent will be calculated based on students' performance on other tests.
 
That will make Tennessee one of 10 states that base teacher evaluations primarily on student achievement, according to Walsh.
 The other 50 percent of a teacher's score will be based on classroom observations by a principal or other administrator. Veteran teachers will be observed at least four times a year, while new teachers will be observed at least six times. Half of those observations must be unannounced, Huffman said.
 
Nearly 5,000 administrators were trained this summer to ensure teachers are being evaluated consistently across districts, he said.
 Field tests of the program in a handful of schools have been promising, but some teachers have expressed fears that principals won't be fair or consistent in their evaluations, Huffman said. And he said principals have complained the observations will take too much time.
 
"The reality, of course, is that evaluation in every field is imperfect," he said. "Our quest instead should be to create the best possible system and make sure that we continue to reflect on that system and refine it over time."
 
Huffman, who taught bilingual education in Houston and worked for Teach for America for 11 years, said teaching in inner-city schools showed him that "all kids, regardless of their circumstances, can achieve at a high level if we as adults deliver the services that those kids deserve."
 
He said he also came to realize that evaluating and paying teachers based on their performance makes sense.
 
"I saw colleagues who were in there at 6:30 in the morning, they were there at 6:30 at night, they were working hard, they were getting results for kids, and they were paid in lock-step with their colleague next door who came from 8 to 3 and wasn't particularly effective," Huffman said. "They were paid in lock-step and they were evaluated in lock-step."
 
The committee's chairman, GOP Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, said he was "heartened" by the teacher quality initiatives presented at Wednesday's hearing and would consider ways to extend similar initiatives to other states.
 
"We are going to continue to grapple with our role, with Washington's role, in what you're doing," he said.