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The system of hiring, paying and rating educators is being changed in Georgia in order to attract and retain the top teachers. This new evaluation system will focus on student performance and will gauge teachers based on this.

These changes are a direct result of the $400 million Race to the Top grant. This initiative was set into motion as a spring board to start nationwide school reform by the Obama administration. Georgia won the grant in return for which the state pledged to rethink policies and to create a new system of evaluation for to enhance teaching efficiency.

Fifty percent of performance teachers will be determined through the standardized test scores students will be taking. During this fall, this new model will roll out in 26 districts where the test scores will be used to judge school leaders too.

Erin Hames will oversee this plan implementation in his capacity as Governor Elect Nathan Deal’s deputy chief of staff. According to him, quality of teaching is one of the most important aspects of a student’s education. He also said that Georgia has to focus on classroom teachers in order to improve education.

According to leaders of this state, the current system is not working very effectively as is evident with the 2008-09 performance evaluations. Aspects taken into account current for the evaluations include job training, classroom observations and interaction with students. However, the system does not take into account student achievement, according to them.

Many educators however are skeptical about linking performance and pay to student test scores though they all agree that the current evaluation system is not perfect. There is also skepticism about whether the state will be able to develop and bring into effect a fair system in the near future.

The application for Race to the Top program contained information on the basics of this new system of evaluation including student test score linking. In exchange for the Federal grant money, the state agreed to implement these key reforms. In keeping with this, the process will be initiated in 26 districts which will then be extended statewide.

Most local districts that have used their own evaluation models until now grade teachers as either satisfactory or unsatisfactory.  Unsatisfactory ratings were required to be reported to the state. In order to ensure that educators obtain more performance feedback and an in-depth understanding of where they have to improve, multiple categories will be introduced in the new evaluations.

Aspects taken into consideration for principal and teacher rating will include lesson plans, whether they have reduced achievement gap, classroom observations and school improvement plans.
All said and done, the most challenging preposition would be to include in these evaluations the student test data. This will also be the most complicated and controversial system ever.

Three years of student test scores will be taken into account and worked out through a mathematical formula to determine future performance. Teachers will be rated based on how closely the trajectory is followed by students. For more accuracy, it is necessary to use complicated formulas. These however may be difficult to explain to teachers.