Communiqué
Research Study on Ohio’s Teacher and Principal Evaluation System Released
By: Tom Hodson
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The Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Policy in cooperation with the Ohio Education Research Center recently released a new research study on the effectiveness of a new “transformative” teacher and principal evaluation method implemented in 2013-2014 across Ohio.
The research found the new system more “variable and thorough” than the previous evaluation system which tended to rate most teachers similarly and highly. There was more variance under the current evaluation system.
The report stated that continued research is necessary and important because there have been modifications to the standardized testing systems in Ohio that were already made in 2014-2015 causing additional evaluation variables.
Three Voinovich faculty members acted as lead researches on the study: assistant professor Dr. Marsha Lewis, associate professor Dr. Anirudh Ruhil and senior project manager Margaret Hutzel.
Dr. Lewis talked with WOUB’s Tom Hodson to explain the study and its findings. She elaborated on teacher concerns about the fairness of the new evaluation system.
She also noted that teachers from poorer school districts, both urban and rural, had a tendency to score lower on the evaluations than teachers from more affluent schools. Lewis said that this fact will be examined more in depth in future research studies.
The full report can be found on the Voinovich School website at http://www.ohio.edu/voinovichschool/news_info/publications/.