LAPS News:

Teachers and principals from Los Alamos will be invited to serve on an Educator Effectiveness System (EES) Task Force that will meet in June and July to revise the Los Alamos School District’s evaluation plans for teachers.

This past year marked the first year of state-mandated changes to the teacher observation evaluation plans. Under this new system, teachers were observed in a set of four domains that rated teachers on a five step rubric, ranging from minimally effective to exemplary.

The New Mexico Public Education Department made a commitment to provide districts the opportunity to revise their NMTEACH Educator Effectiveness System evaluation plans. In the course of the revision, the Public Education Department will allow elementary, middle, and high school three choices for completing observations.

The New Mexico Public Education Department will also allow flexibility in the choices that schools can make to measure improved student achievement, which includes the option to use student and parent surveys and end-of-course exams.

A critical part of the Educator Effective System process is the collection of responses to student and parent surveys. For these surveys to be a meaningful part of the Educator Effectiveness System evaluation plan there must be a 95 percent response rate.  Parent response to the online survey was smaller than anticipated this past year when the district piloted the online parent link.  As such, an important part of the conversation will be how to increase parent response to the online survey.

The Educator Effectiveness System Task Force will provide updates to the community throughout the month of June and July. The Educator Effective System evaluation plan, in its final draft, will be submitted to the School Board for approval prior to submission to the New Mexico Public Education Department Aug. 1, 2014.