Kindergarten Through Twelfth Grade Licensed Personnel Performance Evaluations

The bill specifies the duties of the department of education (department) related to licensed personnel performance evaluation systems, including the following duties, which the department must comply with by the beginning of the 2023-24 school year:

• Creating a modified rubric for evaluating personnel who are consistently rated highly effective;
• Creating specialized rubrics for particular teacher or principal roles;
• Providing free evaluator training for school districts and boards of cooperative services (BOCES);
• Providing guidelines for incorporating a licensed person's professional growth achievements into the evaluation; and
• Providing best practices in methods of conducting evaluations.

The bill directs the state board of education (state board) to adopt rules as necessary to ensure that, beginning with evaluations completed in the 2023-24 school year:

• 30% of a teacher's or principal's evaluation is based on the academic growth of students, and the remainder is based on the teacher's or principal's attainment of quality standards;
• Of that 30%, up to 10% of a licensed person's teacher's or principal's evaluation may be based on collective measures of collective student academic growth for a particular grade level or for an entire school, but the evaluation must not include collective measures of collective student academic growth for students who are not enrolled in the school at which the licensed person teacher or principal is employed; and
• If a licensed person has been employed by a school district or BOCES for one year or less, the person's evaluation must not include collective measures and must not be based on statewide assessment scores data created before the licensed person's employment began .

The bill encourages school districts and BOCES to experiment with innovative methods of conducting observations to use in licensed personnel evaluations. Under the bill, a school district or BOCES must complete the licensed personnel evaluations within the school year for which the person is evaluated and report the performance ratings in aggregate, to the department by June 30 of each October 15 of the next school year. The bill encourages school districts and BOCES to train multiple persons to serve as evaluators so that a licensed person may request an alternative evaluator.For performance evaluations completed for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, the bill prohibits the use of measures of student academic growth derived from the Colorado growth model and measures of student academic growth or performance based on a school district's, board of cooperative service's, or school's performance plan type.The bill appropriates $452,973 from the general fund to the department of education. Of that amount:

• $343,059 is for educator effectiveness unit administration;
• $90,200 is for information technology services; and
• $19,714 is for legal services and is reappropriated to the department of law.

(Note: Italicized words indicate new material added to the original summary; dashes through words indicate deletions from the original summary.)

(Note: This summary applies to the reengrossed version of this bill as introduced in the second house.)