House Bill 404 granted school districts flexibility around educator evaluations for the 2020-2021 school year. Specifically, a school district board of education may elect not to conduct an evaluation of a teacher, school counselor, administrator, or superintendent for the 2020-2021 school year if the district board determines that it would be impossible or impracticable to do so. ODE has issued FAQs that provide additional information about these changes.
ODE clarified that a district can make a determination on a case-by-case basis on whether to evaluate a particular educator or whether to obtain an exemption. Yet ODE reinforced that school districts should collaborate with their collective bargaining units to determine whether to complete evaluations, including whether to complete evaluations for certain educators while foregoing others. For example, a district may decide to complete only evaluations for educators who are eligible for continuing contract, or to complete only evaluations that were in progress and had reached a certain point in the process. Please note, unlike last year and the flexibility provided by House Bill 197, House Bill 404 did not alter evaluation deadlines. For instance, evaluation deadlines for teachers remain May 1 to complete the teacher evaluation and May 10 to provide to the teacher a written report of the results.
For educators the district determines not to evaluate, the “COVID-19” option must be selected under the “Exemption” tab within eTPES and OhioES. ODE has clarified that evaluations must either be completed or closed with an exemption. ETPES and OhioES will remain open until June 15, 2021, to enter and finalize evaluation data.
When an exemption is selected, any evaluation evidence already collected for the 2020-2021 cannot be used for evaluation purposes. Yet ODE did state that such evidence can “continue to be used for educator self-reflection” and for Professional Growth Plans or Improvement Plans for the 2021-2022 school year.
For districts utilizing OTES 1.0, ODE provided a chart to show the impact of districts’ decisions regarding evaluations this school year. This includes that for teachers on the less frequent evaluation cycle (skilled and accomplished) who have completed evaluations in 2020-2021, ODE confirmed that such teachers remain at the same point in the evaluation cycle and retain the same evaluation rating for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years as for the 2019-2020 school year.
Under OTES 2.0, ODE also provided a chart to show evaluation decision impact. That includes that teachers on the less frequent evaluation cycle who have a completed evaluation in 2020-2021 may move ahead in the evaluation cycle, again, only under OTES 2.0. ODE gave the following example: under OTES 2.0, a teacher with an Accomplished rating in year 2 of the less frequent evaluation cycle who has a completed evaluation in 2020-2021 would move ahead to Accomplished year 3 in 2021-2022.
It is important to keep in mind that districts that chose to delay implementation of OTES 2.0 this school year are required to implement OTES 2.0 in the 2021-2022 school year unless the district is operating under a collective bargaining agreement entered into prior to November 2, 2018. If so, those districts are required to implement OTES 2.0 upon expiration of the collective bargaining agreement entered into prior to November 2, 2018.
Contact your legal counsel for questions and concerns about making decisions on how to handle evaluations for the 2020-2021 school year.