By ALLISSA KLINE
akline@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1612

A new teacher evaluation system tied to student test scores is set to go in place this fall for some public-school educators in New York state. But key details of the system remain unclear just weeks before it is supposed to launch.

Namely, school districts are waiting to learn more about how to score performance evaluations for teachers and principals. A law passed last year outlines a scoring system that assigns 20 points - out of 100 total points - to students' standardized test scores.

But there is now confusion about how many points will be assigned to student test scores. In response, the New York State United Teachers union last month filed a lawsuit accusing the Board of Regents - the state's governing body for education - of giving districts more power to use test scores to gauge teacher performance.

The new system emerged from state legislation passed in pursuit of $700 million in federal Race to the Top education funds. It is set to be implemented this fall for fourth- through eighth-grade math and English language arts teachers. It will apply to all teachers and building principals next fall.

Robert Bennett, member and chancellor emeritus of the Board of Regents, said the evaluation model is designed to "bring some uniformity" to the way school districts measure the performance of employees. Right now, the state's hundreds of school districts develop and utilize their own evaluation methods.

"The point of this is to trigger improvements for teacher training," Bennett said. "I think it should not be viewed as a negative, but as a positive. It's a move that will help teachers improve and it will create much more serious accountability for superintendents and school boards."

A series of training and information sessions are scheduled in early August for educators, Bennett said. The meetings will bring some clarity to the system before the start of the fall 2011 school year, he added.

A year ago, the state Education Department and NYSUT reached an agreement to overhaul teacher evaluations and tie them, at least partially, to student test scores. Four categories were set forth - 4 as highly effective, 3 as effective, 2 as developing and 1 as ineffective. Teachers were to be measured on a 100-point scale, with 60 points attributable to classroom observation, peer input and parental feedback. Twenty points would be tied to student test scores, while the districts would determine the basis for the remaining 20 points.

Any teacher that receives an "ineffective" score two years in a row would be subject to an expedited hearing process and likely job termination.

NYSUT has "never been against the idea" of implementing a statewide teacher evaluation process, said Michael Preskop, regional director of NYSUT who retires this month. But there are concerns, he said, about educators who teach disadvantaged students who may not score well on tests. And it is not clear how teachers of art, music or physical education would be evaluated since there are no standardized tests in those areas.

"The bottom line here is that teachers will be evaluated, to a certain degree, on student performance ... and we now have to work out how that's going to be done," Preskop said. "Although it sounds really good, there's a whole slew of problems related to it."

One local superintendent isn't sure it makes sense to impose a "one size fits all" system on school districts.

"But I don't think having 700 iterations is useful either," said Robert Christman, superintendent of Grand Island Central School District. He's also president of the state Council of School Superintendents.

He pointed to three unknowns - how much of the point system will be tied to student test scores, how the appeals process will work for teachers who think they deserve higher scores; and whether the scores will be released to the public. The latter could "set off a dynamic with parents saying, 'I don't want an 87 teacher. I want a 91 teacher,' " he said.

Bennett supports the idea of publicly releasing the scores, while Preskop questions the purpose of doing so. The state will decide whether to make the information public.