Talks on teacher evaluation warm up in North Shore

Glendale - Nicolet School District Administrator Rick Monroe has been meeting with teachers to develop a method for teacher evaluation.

The teachers have been coming to his office every two weeks for an after-school meeting, sharing their thoughts on the best way to evaluate teachers. Evaluation will likely be tied to student performance and pay, he said.

Every district in the state is facing that challenge since Act 10 limited teacher contracts to salary negotiations limited to the cost of living. Monroe also has become part of a larger conversation that already includes several other school districts in the North Shore, including Brown Deer and Fox Point-Bayside, among the districts that joined earlier this fall.

He told the Nicolet School Board that three administrators and three teachers will attend meetings of the Southeastern Wisconsin Teachers Evaluation Consortium. There is a charge for the district, likely $1 per pupil or less, he said after the meeting. The cost for the study and report has steadily declined as more school districts have joined the consortium.

Monroe said the consortium likely will have some input into what could be a state-mandated evaluation process.

Monroe said the evaluation method will be the first in a two-part process. The second step, he said, will be the development of a way to assess student growth.