When Mayade Ersoff got her annual evaluation in late November, the veteran teacher barely made it over the threshold needed to be considered effective. Her score was dragged down by a portion of the evaluation based on her students’ standardized test scores in English Language Arts.

The problem? Ersoff doesn’t teach English. She teaches world history. And the 78 students her evaluation was based on represent only two-thirds of the students in her sixth-grade classes at Palmetto Middle School.

“It makes no sense whatsoever,” said Ersoff, who like all teachers was evaluated in November for last year’s performance. “It’s a slap in the face.”

 In the weeks after teacher evaluations for the 2015-16 school year were distributed, Miami-Dade teachers flooded social media with questions and complaints. Teachers reported similar stories of being evaluated based on test scores in subjects they don’t teach and not being able to get a clear explanation from school administrators. In dozens of Facebook posts, they described feeling confused, frustrated and worried. Teachers risk losing their jobs if they get a series of low evaluations, and some  stand to gain pay raises and a  bonus of up to $10, 000if they get top marks.

“They’re killing us this year with morale,” said Shawn Beightol, a chemistry teacher at John A. Ferguson Senior High School.  “It’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back. There are teachers quitting right now because of this.”

Teacher evaluations that use a  complicated statistical model based on test scores to measure student performance  have been controversial since the current evaluation system was created by a state law in 2011. A third of the points on the evaluation are based on a “value-added” model that predicts how well students should do on standardized tests and assigns teachers a score based on whether their students meet those expectations. The other two components are a class observation by a school administrator and a plan that teachers submit detailing their classroom goals.

Read more at our partner  the Miami Herald. 

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