FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Contact: Doug Pratt, MEA Director of Public Affairs, 517-337-5508

EAST LANSING – The Michigan Education Associationtoday issued the following statement applauding the state House for passing Senate Bill 122, which would delay a drastic increase in the weight student test scores have on teachers’ evaluations, making the current broken system for teacher evaluation even worse.

“Thanks to broad bipartisan support in the state House and Senate, SB 122 will provide Michigan with a window of time to fix our broken teacher evaluation system – changing it from a punitive process to one that works for students and educators,” said MEA President Paula Herbart. “Based on feedback about evaluations from front-line educators, this delay only keeps a big problem from getting worse. We look forward to working with the governor and legislators from both parties to fix this system so it helps deliver the highest quality education for every student.”

SB 122 would enact a one-year delay on a scheduled increase in the weight test scores have in the teacher evaluation process. Without legislative intervention, the percentage of a teacher’s evaluations based on test scores would jump from 25 percent to 40 percent this year.

A recent survey of nearly 17,000 educators by Launch Michigan found only a third of teachers believe the current evaluations improve teaching and learning. The April MEA Voicemagazine includes in-depth stories from frontline educators about the failures of the current evaluation system – read more at https://mea.org/evaluation/.