Today’s action by the State Board of Education puts the focus back where it belongs: on teaching, learning, and student achievement.
By voting to accept the Performance Evaluation and Advisory Council (PEAC) recommendations, which define how mastery tests can and can’t be used, the State Board of Education showed its commitment to children.
The new state mastery exam guidelines put the test in its proper context. The guidelines define the clear use and purpose of the test and confirm that it should not be used to evaluate teachers. The state mastery test results can be used to inform goal setting and professional learning, as appropriate, for educators, but they cannot be used as a measure of goal attainment or in the calculation of an educator’s summative rating.
Members of PEAC have engaged in rich dialogue, debate, and discussion over the past five years to put everything in perspective and create these new guidelines. We feel confident that these new guidelines will have positive outcomes for everyone—students, teachers, and administrators—and will allow us to continue to move forward to improve the educational opportunities for all public school students in Connecticut.
The Connecticut Education Association represents 43,000 teachers in Connecticut.
