Legal issues in teacher evaluation: Who's in charge of what accountability?

Spurred by the reform studies of the early 1980s, governors and legislatures throughout the country began to rely on the reform reports, purporting to accurately delineate the state of education, to tighten their involvement in state legislation for education. Among the myriad areas of reform reportedly needed, concerns about the state teacher evaluation surfaced. Armed with this research, legislatures began focusing on account-ability through teacher evaluation as a means of improving the state of the schools. Between the years of 1983-1985, twenty states attempted their first enactment of legislation for teacher evaluation, signaling the beginning of a legislatively mandated movement toward accountability.(1) By the end of this first reform movement in 1992, which formed the basis forming the accountability movement in full effect at present, thirty-eight states had enacted state-level legislation on teacher evaluation(2). However, few states required and provided training of evaluators who were to perform these teacher evaluations. At present, forty-two states(3) have some form of teacher evaluation legislation, with thirty-four(4) specifying the person(s) responsible for conducting the teacher evaluation procedures. This research focuses on four questions: (1) Who is the legislature currently holding accountable for conducting teacher state to determine conformance with the computerized citations. Finally, a database for each discrete area of the statute subject to analyzation for this research was developed. Forty-two states have statutory language regulating the evaluation of classroom teachers. At least six of the forty-two state statutes on teacher evaluation are located within other provisions of the state code and do not necessarily contain separate subtitles or sections that directly address teacher evaluation. For example, in Michigan, teacher evaluation is addressed under Teacher Tenure Statute; in Minnesota teacher evaluation is under Employment Contracts; in Nebraska it is under Teacher and Administrator Tenure; in Iowa it is listed under School District Directors Powers and Duties; in Wisconsin it is subsumed under School District Standards; in Idaho it is under Issuance of Annual Contracts; and in Virginia evaluation is mentioned under Employment of Teachers.