Bills proposed by Gov. Bobby Jindal that make sweeping changes to the way they’re paid, tenured and evaluated on performance are now law.

Jindal and his allies say the new laws will reward high-performing teachers and punish bad ones. State teacher unions say the laws place an even bigger burden on teachers and put their destiny in the hands of students they can’t control.

But there’s an even more basic question behind all these new laws — how do you judge a teacher’s performance?

The state’s answer lies in a brand-new “value-added” model called COMPASS, a labyrinthine system of formulas, test scores and teacher evaluations that will be implemented statewide next year. And with so many new laws hinging on a teacher’s COMPASS evaluation, uncertainty about exactly how the system works has caused a great deal of anxiety among teachers in the trenches.

WHAT’S THE PLAN?

The COMPASS system is brand new to Louisiana’s teachers. Terrebonne Parish is one of about a dozen school systems that participated in a pilot version of the plan this school year. The other parishes, including Lafourche, will be dealing with the system for the first time in the next school year.

Put broadly, the COMPASS system judges 50 percent of a teacher’s performance based on student performance and 50 percent on evaluations by principals.

Principal evaluations are already a huge factor in determining teachers’ performance. For most teachers, it’s the student performance aspect that’s controversial.

Measuring student performance, especially as measured through standardized tests, poses a big problem in many teachers’ minds. Outside factors, they argue, can often drag down students’ test scores in ways teachers can’t fix. A teacher, for example, can’t control factors like parental involvement, student poverty and nutrition, or even a student’s basic test-taking aptitude.

The COMPASS system doesn’t simply base student performance on a flat grade, however. Instead, it creates a complex statistical profile for each student, sets a “student learning target” based on that profile, then measures a student’s performance against that target.

JUDGING STUDENT

PERFORMANCE

A host of numbers go into each student’s target score.

The most heavily-weighted factor is a student’s existing test scores. A student who performed poorly on previous standardized tests, for example, is not expected to do well on next year’s tests — he or she is just expected to do better than they did before.

How much better that student should do depends on who the student is. Major factors that make up that profile include:

n Whether a student is gifted

n Whether a student receives free or reduced lunch (and thus comes from a low-income family)

n How proficient a student is in English

n Prior discipline history

n Attendence record

n Disability status

If a student has a poor disciplinary history and misses class often, for example, that student will not be expected to improve as much as a well-behaved student who never misses class.

That theoretically means a teacher’s performance rating won’t be affected by outside variables.

After students take standardized tests at the end of the year, each student’s score is compared against his or her student learning target. Students then gets a positive or negative score based on whether they missed, met or exceeded that target.

All of a teacher’s students are then added together and tweaked based on factors such as class size. That adjusted score would then be used for the 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation based on student performance. Combined with the score from the principal’s evaluations, the teacher would then receive a final score on a scale from one to five.

Scores from 1.0 to 1.9 will be labeled as “Ineffective,” 2.0 to 4.0 ”Effective”, and 4.1 to 5.0 as “Highly Effective.”

A teacher who makes an “Ineffective” on either the student growth or subjective evaluation measures will be rated “Ineffective” overall.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

For teachers, the stakes are high for the system to be fair. Under the new laws, a teacher’s evaluation scores will determine whether they keep or earn tenure, how much they get paid, and even, in rare cases, whether they keep their job.

If a teacher makes an “Ineffective” rating, the local school district must provide immediate, intensive professional development to get them on track. If a teacher continues to earn that rating after that development program is finished, the district must fire the teacher.

An “Ineffective” rating also jeopardizes a teacher’s certification.

The teacher rating also plays into new, tougher teacher tenure laws.

Teachers who are rated “Ineffective” would lose their tenure. To earn it back — or to earn tenure in the first place — teachers have to earn the “Highly Effective” label for five consecutive years.

TEACHERS’ CONCERNS

The new evaluation system has many teachers on edge. They worry that the arcane statistics that drive the evaluation might not cover all the outside factors that determine how well a student does on a test.

State Superintendent John White has been traveling all over the state hosting town-hall meetings with teachers and principals, where he has tried to explain the nuts and bolts of the system and attempted to calm some of their fears. Last month, he gave one such town hall at South Lafourche High School.

Despite the school’s remote location, about 75 teachers came to voice concerns about the new system.

“There are still so many unanswered questions,” Gaye Cheramie, principal at Golden Meadow Upper Elementary, told White. “So much is happening so fast that many educators aren’t able to keep up with it all.”

At that meeting, teachers argued the system doesn’t — and can’t — account for subjective factors like parent involvement and student ambition. They also expressed fears they were being judged on a system they didn’t fully understand.

White assured the teachers that very few of them would be affected by the new system. He said only 16 teachers out of more than 1,000 teachers in Terrebonne Parish netted the “Ineffective” label in the past year’s pilot program.

“I bet most of you are already doing what you need to do to make the right scores,” he said. “Most of you aren’t going to be anywhere close to getting punished, because you’re already doing a good job.”

Still, White acknowledged the state department has work to do in informing teachers exactly how the system will work.

“We need to do a better job communicating with teachers,” he said. “The more I talk to teachers, the more I understand that.”

White said teachers and others interested in learning more about how the system works should visit the state department’s website, louisianaschools.net. That site includes videos of some of the town halls White has conducted. Several virtual town halls are scheduled over the next few weeks.

The site also includes a lengthy Frequently Asked Questions section and detailed overview of the assessment program.

Have questions about the COMPASS system? Don’t understand something in the story or something you read elsewhere? Staff Writer Matthew Albright can be reached at 448-7635 or at matthew.albright@dailycomet.com.