Five Indiana Schools Give Majority Of Teachers Poor Performance Ratings

This week, the department of education released data on teacher evaluation rankings in the state for the 2014-2015 school year, the most up to date data. (ArmyStrongPA/Flickr)” credit=”

Five Indiana schools rate a majority of their teachers as ineffective or needing improvement.

This week, the department of education released data on teacher evaluation rankings in the state for the 2014-2015 school year, the most up to date data. The data included all public and charter schools.

Five schools reported more than 50 percent of their teachers received ineffective or needs improvement rating, the lowest categories.

They are Tindley Renaissance Academy in Indianapolis, Charter School of the Dunes in Gary, IN Math & Science Academy South in Indianapolis, Joseph Block Middle School in East Chicago and Andrew J. Brown Academy in Indianapolis. Four of the five are charter schools.

Despite the low rankings in these five schools, the overall number of teachers receiving lower evaluations continued to decrease for the third year in a row since major changes to toughen up state’s teacher evaluation system in 2011.

Currently, less than 2 percent of teachers statewide received these low rankings.

Douglas Harris, a professor at Tulane University, researches teacher evaluation systems around the country. He said this is a national trend for charter schools.

“Charter schools often but not always tend to be more outcome-driven and are more likely to be aggressive and rate teachers low and to dismiss low performing teachers,” Harris said.

He said traditional public teachers have comparatively higher ratings, nationwide.

Indiana does not have a standard statewide teacher evaluation, instead school districts determine evaluation standards and processes.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Joseph Block Middle School as a charter school. It is a public middle school in the School City of East Chicago.