New Pa. evaluations won’t apply to charter school teachers

Teachers in most of Pennsylvania’s public schools will see some changes next year to how they’re evaluated. The new requirements, however, will not apply to charter schools.

The new scoring rubric is intended to weed out teachers who aren’t pulling their weight. The revised evaluations use a wider range of scores. At least half of a teacher’s rating will be based in part on student performance under the new system.

But they will apply only to traditional public schools, not charter schools.

That omission, said state Rep. James Roebuck, D-Philadelphia says, means that the new teacher evaluations won’t be a true reform.

“Because we are not demanding that every teacher in the commonwealth in the public school system, which we fund, be accountable at the same level,” he said. “Understand, we are spending public dollars that are not being accounted for.

The given rationale for not including charter school teachers was simple.

Lawmakers expected to pass accountability measures tailor-made for charter schools as part of a separate charter school reform package.

But that deal disintegrated in the hours before the end of the legislative session.