Recently, The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun ran pieces indicating that the rejection of the Maryland State Department of Education’s proposed changes to the educator evaluation system by the Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review (AELR) panel in Annapolis endangers the $250 million Race to the Top Grant award the state received this fall. This is far from accurate. PGCEA and MSEA, while supporting the development of a fair and rigorous evaluation system for Maryland’s educators, opposed the requirement that 50% of the evaluation be tied directly to student growth, as this conflicts with Education Reform Act of 2010 passed by the General Assembly last spring. The law requires student growth to be a significant factor, with the weight to be determined by the local education agencies.

MSEA has done an analysis of the reviewer scoring of Maryland’s Race to the Top application and determined that a lesser weight for the student growth component would not endanger Maryland’s grant award. Six of the twelve Race to the Top recipients did not have the 50 percent student growth requirement; they relied on a lower threshold or simply said "significant". And their scores on the student growth measure and teacher evaluation components were within 3.6 points of Maryland's. So even were we to lose this entire 3.6, our overall score--surpassing the qualifying total by 10 points--remains well above the required level.

The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun won’t tell you that. They would rather perpetuate the myth that this is “the unions” standing in the way of reform, rather than reporting what it really is; your Association advocating for what is right and fair under the law.