By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — In the not-too-distance future, school districts across the state will be able to evaluate a teacher using the same criteria — not with a test, but with a research-based list of criteria.

A state Department of Education task force is about to tackle the job of formulating the standards.

“We believe that by having that framework and standards in place, that more and more teachers will understand what we’re asking them to do, especially when we look at having children engaged,” Beverly Williams, Assistant Education Commissioner for Human Resources and Licensure, said last week.

Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, suggested at a recent conference sponsored by the UA Office of Education Policy that now may be the time for Arkansas “to establish measures that can show increases in the academic quality of its teaching force, in reading and in mathematics especially.”

Stotsky discussed a variety of criteria the state could use to determine whether the effectiveness and quality of teachers are improving over time, including keeping track of the scores teachers receive on their licensure tests and whether the score was on their first try or subsequent tries, and the total number of teachers in specific subject areas and whether they studied that area in college.

She said the state might consider a dedicated test of research-based reading instructional knowledge for all prospective elementary school teachers, as well as special education and early child teachers, something currently done in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Virginia, and requiring a more extensive test of math knowledge, like Massachusetts does.

Stotsky arrived at the university less than two years ago after spending four years as senior associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Education. There, she was responsible for revising that state’s pre-K through 12th grade standards, teacher and administrator licensing regulations, teacher tests and professional development criteria.

Last month, she presented a paper on improving K-12 standards to the Ohio Senate Education Committee.

Rep. David Rainey, D-Dumas, says Arkansas for some time has been wrestling finding quality teachers and keeping them.

“We have to identify how we can get those outstanding teachers who are extraordinarily effective and how to retain them,” said Rainey, a former public school administrator and a guest lecturer in education at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. “We know we’ve got a critical problem … we need more and better teachers.”

Arkansas and Ohio are currently the only two states that use the PRAXIS III Classroom Performance Assessment system to evaluate teachers. The highly structured program includes observation of the teacher’s classroom practice; review of written materials prepared by the teacher; and interviews with the teacher before and after the observation.

The assessment also includes a mentor for the new teacher.

The task force, comprised of 24 educators and administrators, would build on the PRAXIS III system to develop a “model for Arkansas to create a new evaluation system that all of our school districts can use,” Williams said.

“We as a state have not defined highly effective teacher, “ she said. “That’s something we are working on.”

The task force is to begin meeting in July and will work with Charlotte Danielson of Princeton, N.J., an education consultant who specializes in teacher quality and evaluation, Williams said.

The goal is for a pilot program to be available for school districts by the fall of 2010, and that the program is available to all school districts by the 2011-2012 school year, she said.

The state Education Department cannot mandate that each of the state’s 245 school districts use the teacher evaluation program, but it can offer information and provide training, she said.

“Most of the school districts don’t have the resources, meaning time, finances or people, to come together to look at this,” Williams said.

As for a teacher report card, or test, to evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher, Williams said opposed the idea. In the early 1980s, the state required classroom teachers to take a competency test as part of implementing new state school standards.

Williams said lawyers are evaluated by how they perform in court and doctors by how they treat patients.

“We don’t give grades to doctors and lawyers to determine how effective they are, or their success rate,” she said, adding that the state already has a system in place to determine whether a teacher is “highly qualified.”

The system includes PRAXIS I, a pre-skills test that all incoming teachers must pass covering reading, writing and math. PRAXIS II covers the teacher’s content knowledge, their ability to teach content, she said.