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In the fourth year of New Mexico’s controversial teacher evaluation system, a record rate of educators both in Santa Fe and across the state received a positive assessment of “effective” or better.
According to the department’s report, 74.3 percent of the state’s 21,000 teachers received a positive rating for the 2016-17 school year, up from 71.3 percent in 2015-16, when the rate of educators rated at least effective had declined from the two previous years.
This year, 5.2 percent of Santa Fe teachers were rated exemplary, 28 percent were rated highly effective, 39.1 percent were rated effective, 25.1 percent were rated minimally effective and 2.6 percent were rated ineffective.
Earlier this year, a Brown University study found that New Mexico had the toughest teacher evaluation system out of 24 states examined based on 2015-16 data. Nearly 29 percent of the New Mexico’s teachers were rated below effective that year. In comparison, most of the other states in the study rated less than 5 percent of their teachers below effective.
New Mexico’s teacher evaluation system incorporates several measures of an educator’s performance, including student test scores, classroom observations conducted by principals or other administrators, teacher attendance and student surveys. There are five possible ratings in the assessment system, ranging from ineffective to exemplary.