House Education Committee Votes To Postpone Controversial Teacher Evaluation Program

BATON ROUGE, La. (KPEL) -- The House Education Committee Wednesday evening approved a bill that would delay for a year the implementation of a controversial new teacher evaluation program passed by state lawmakers last year.

The COMPASS evaluations, a set of two one-hour observations of teachers that are also tied to students' standardized test scores, is incredibly unpopular among teachers and teachers unions, who say the process is flawed and unfair.

Minden Rep. Gary Reynolds introduced the bill, which passed the committee unanimously. That extra time would be used to tweak the program until it met the approval of both teachers and lawmakers, Reynolds said.

"Believe this or not, we had the Department of Education, we had Republicans, we had Democrats, we had school board association, the superintendent association, and both unions at one table, and we all worked on this thing, and we all got it to an instrument that we think is fair," Reynolds said.

Jonathan Cole, a social studies teacher in Lafayette Parish, said the “bureaucratic encroachment into the classroom” needs to be pulled back, allowing individual school districts to determine what’s best for their own interests.

Teachers from across the state rallied Wednesday at the state capitol to voice their displeasure of Gov. Bobby Jindal's education reforms package, which included the unpopular COMPASS evaluations. The evaluation program went into effect in September.

The teachers unions are on board with his bill, Reynolds said.

The bill now moves to the House floor for debate.