I just received the following information from the Nebraska Commissioner of Education.
"The 2010-11 school year has begun and with it comes new data collections as required by new federal and state laws. Many of the new data collections are requirements for the federal ARRA State Fiscal Stabilization Funds. The new data requirements Include:
• Courses completed and grades earned for all high school students;
• Class (section information) to connect teacher and student data; and
• The number and percent of teachers and principals at each performance level of a school district’s evaluation system, if a district’s evaluation system has performance levels, and
• The Legislature’s mandated collection of excessive absences (by the 10th of each month beginning October 10th)."
The two of interest are the collecting of teacher evaluation results and connecting students to the teacher who taught their classes. This is to lead to comparing teachers based on the performance of their students. I don't know what this will lead to, but it will raise the anxiety of many teachers. In larger school systems they are not going to want low achieving students in their classes.
