I'm trying to figure out whether House Bill 1030 is nice, nefarious, or even necessary. HB 1030 would add the following text to our statutes governing public school teacher evaluations:
Any record or document, regardless of physical form, created by a public school, public school district, or any other school in connection with the evaluation of an individual teacher, principal, or other school employee constitutes personnel information and is not open to inspection or copying pursuant to subdivision 1-27-1.5(7).
Let me put on my best tinfoil hat: I think Attorney General Marty Jackley asked the Department of Education to request this bill in an attempt to catch me in self-interested inconsistency on public records laws. Clever!
I'm open to a debate about whether a public school teacher's job evaluations should be open to public review. But I wonder if existing statute already makes those evaluations confidential. SDCL 13-42-34 already requires public schools to evaluate their teaching personnel. Any documents created in that personnel evaluation process would seem to be personnel information. SDCL 1-27-1.5 exempts personnel information from public release.
So unless I'm missing some important legal challenge or precedent (here's your invitation, dear readers, to prove me wrong!), House Bill 1030 appears to be unnecessary.
I can't argue for more open government and then support this. Also, schools in general need to be more open if they are ever going to try to gain the trust of the public. But there are enough firewalls in place to protect things that could really be damaging. I agree with you CH. This one is unnecessary at best.
Maybe there was a court decision they are trying to get around. Or maybe there is a case pending for which they are trying to win outside the court room.
Yeah, but you can't win a pending case by changing the law, can you? Wasn't that part of the robocall case: the law had changed, but the court still had to consider the the actions under the law in effect at the time of the actions?
Analysis of the reason South Dakota is the second most corrupt state in USA found that the inherent secrecy in state government and the taciturn nature of the voters who overlook it, is rampant. Thanks to Mr. Heidelberger for pulling the curtain back on these continual conservative deceptions. VOTE RICK WEILAND for honesty in SoDak.
Restricting information availability isn't really conservative, it is retrogressive. Conservatives in more than name only and liberals of all shades should be in favor of open public records to the full extent reasonable.
Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't, Cory. But it wouldn't be the first time they tried. ACLU had a suit going in federal court about a year ago. I don't remember the details, but the AG's Office delayed complying with the court's order so they could change the some state law so they wouldn't have to comply. Robert Doody, formerly of ACLU, could elaborate.
This is a bill fit for amending. They can simply change the chapter reference from 13-42 to whatever chapter applies to university employees, and voila! Nothing pertaining to Joop Bollen's time at NSU can be released.
You know, they probably don't even need to amend it. Just pass it as it is and claim that anything pertaining to the Joopster's time at NSU under the "any other school" language.
I think there has to be some privacy between the employer (the school) and the employee (teacher). Teachers have rights just like anybody else. The school, school board, the teacher and the local teacher education assaociate (if the teacher belongs to it) should have access to the evaluation.
If there is a law already on the books then this is not needed.
This is a feel-good bill for the teachers. It isn't needed because of those laws Mr. H already researched up but they probably want it out there as part of some soon to be release law bill about really cranking up the teacher reviews to identify the good teachers from the bad for some other new or back again law. This law makes me think there are some big teacher review bills coming that then they can say "yes but it will be secret."
Teacher evaluations should be confidential. They were always part of the personnel file, so this bill would not be needed unless there is some new way of doing teacher evaluations that would use some publicly available data (classroom data on standardized tests).
I'm past the time of having little ones in school, but I do wonder that if a parent requests evaluations of their child's teacher, should they be allowed to review them? Does a parent have any rights in this situation?
Also, on the surface this gives the appearance of one more excuse to justify hiding information from the public.
Perhaps part of these new bills is that teacher evaluations have to be posted on the internet. Maybe this bill is intended to make sure no names are posted and just the school and grade. That way parents of 8th graders in whatever school district could see a summary of how the 8th grade teachers are doing.
Teacher evaluations are kept confidential and can only be released with the teacher's knowledge. The only thing I can think of its pertaining more to showing them among other teachers or administrators in the school?
Wouldn't "truth in teaching" require such evaluations to me made available to parents? Of course, it might be fair to see impartial evaluations of Jackley, Daugaard, et al as well. Sauce for the sauced and unsauced.
The one thing about teachers, administrators, and other officials is that when they leave abruptly, it is always announced as being for personal reasons. I think the facts for these abrupt terminations should be released.
Like when they fire a bad teacher, Ms. Brown? I, for one, don't think there are ever firings of the bad teachers but when a teacher does leave for real personal reasons it is none of our business.
They quit. They don't need to give a reason. Could be the hubby got a high paying job out east in Sioux Falls, could be a bout of insanity laid the teacher low, could be a lifestyle choice that enticed a move to the west coast. None of our bees wax.
what's your definition of a bad teacher Grudznick. I've seen good teachers trying to be fired
Everybody knows good teachers and bad teachers, Mr. Reitzel. Same as they know the difference between a good fishmonger and a bad one or a good barber and a bad one. In your town ask a dozen parents who the best teachers are at their kids school. They'll know.
Just as a twist to making teacher evaluations public, there has been more and more of a push that teacher evaluations ought to include student performance (especially a push for those to be test scores by conservatives). The ripple of allowing teacher evaluations to be public would be for student test scores to also be public.
Donald and Steve point to an important part of teacher evaluations and confidentiality in school. It's hard to look at teachers' job performance without looking at their students' performance. The moment evaluations mention aspects of student performance, those details are locked up not by state law on personnel records but by federal law on education privacy rights.
Steve, I'm curious: if we made teacher evals public, and if those evals included student performance data, could we publish aggregate data (e.g., "70% of students in this teacher's classroom scored B's or better on the teacher's final exam"), or would that violate FERPA?
Most aggregate data probably wouldn't fall under FERPA. However, it might depend on how many students are aggregated in the data, and what the data is. To be really useful to the teacher you might want to disaggregate some of the data. How do students of a particular sex or race do in Mr. White's class? How do special education students do? When you partially disaggregate data to help specify strong or weak areas of teaching, you can end up identifying particular students.