Teacher Evaluation Review Didn’t Check for State Compliance

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Officials with the Idaho Department of Education paid more than $100,000 for a review of the state's teacher evaluation system, but did not instruct the outside consulting team to ensure the system was complying with state law.

State law allows school districts to build their own model for teacher evaluations.

Instead of comparing each evaluation to the model it was built under, McREL International was instructed by a state advisory committee to compare them all to one specific model.

As a result, the consulting team found that 99 percent of the selected evaluations were incomplete, but didn't identify which ones were designed under a different model.

Consultants, state officials and the Idaho State Board of Education discussed details of the report during Thursday's meeting.