SB 17-067: Educator Effectiveness 50% Student Academic Growth

This bill eliminates the requirement that 50% of a teachers evaluation be based on student test scores and grants school districts the flexibility use student academic growth, in an amount not to exceed 20%, in educator evaluations.

The bill also allows a local board of education or board of cooperative services that adopts its own local licensed personnel evaluation system to exempt teachers or principals who have either an existing effective or highly effective rating from the annual requirements of such system for a period not to exceed 3 years. If a local board of education or board of cooperative services decides to provide such an exemption, the teacher or principal retains the rating he or she received on his or her most recent evaluation for the exemption period. A teacher or principal who has been exempt from evaluations pursuant to this bill may request a new evaluation prior to the end of the exemption period. The rating from such a new evaluation will become the teacher's or principal's new performance evaluation rating.

Legislative procedure in Colorado requires every introduced bill to have a hearing in committee. The committee members will either support the bill and vote pass it out of committee for consideration by the full body, or kill the bill and vote to “postpone indefinitely."

The motion in the Senate Education Committee was to "postpone indefinitely” SB 67 so the pro-education vote was a “no” vote.