American Society Today has a great post up, that they have kindly allowed us to reproduce. If you're not bookmarking or following American Society Today, you're missing out on some great stuff.
As a result of Ohio House Bill 153, Ohio's budget, the legislature has mandated new standards for teacher evaluations. These new mandates apply to both Race to the Top districts and districts that did not receive Race to the Top funds. The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) was given the task of developing the new Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES pronounced [ō-tĕs]). Ohio Senate Bill 316, the Mid-Budget Review made some changes to these requirements, so the requirements have continued to change. Despite these changes, there is a framework that has emerged as the basic structure for the system. Here is a link to Frequently Asked Questions about OTES from ODE: FAQs
ODE has recently released some videos on YouTube to help educate people about Ohio's new Teacher Evaluation System. These videos have been embedded below.
Ohio's Teacher Evaluation System-What's Changing?
Evaluation of Teacher Performance-How Will This Work?
Evaluation of Student Growth Measures-How Will This Work?
In this video he does not talk a lot about the locally determined measures of student growth, which will be the measures used for the majority of teachers. The process that ODE has developed for developing these is known as Student Learning Objectives (SLOs), which he mentions in the video but does not explain. Here is a link to more information about Student Learning Objectives from the Symposium on Teacher Evaluations that ODE provided on May 25, 2012: http://ohioeducatoreval.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/slosymposiumpresentation.pdf
Here is a link to brief explanation of the Student Learning Objective process from ODE: Student Learning Objectives
Here is a link to the template checklist for writing Student Learning Objectives: SLO Checklist
Teacher Ratings -How Will They Be Used?
In this video he does not talk a lot about performance pay or employment decisions, which to many people are the most important topics related to teacher evaluations in Ohio. Ohio HB 153 requires that teachers who are rated "Accomplished" be paid more than teachers who are rated "Proficient." Also, any teacher rated "Ineffective" for two out of three years may not be renewed. Local districts will be developing these new performance pay systems over the next couple of years.