Everyone is a winner. Nearly every teacher in Manatee County receives high marks on annual evaluation.

There are just two teachers in Manatee County schools who need improvement and only three who have been deemed unsatisfactory. At some schools, nearly 90 percent of teachers are “highly effective,” while other schools have none.

Such statistics can be found in the Florida Department of Education’s report on personnel evaluations, which was released earlier this month.

The report details the results of teacher evaluations in all of Florida’s school districts from the 2015-16 school year.

In Manatee County, 48.1 percent of the teachers were ranked as “highly effective,” and 50 percent received “effective” rankings. Just two teachers received “needs improvement,” 15 new teachers were labeled “developing,” three received “unsatisfactory,” and 269, or roughly 8 percent, were not evaluated, according to the state Department of Education.

The schools with the most teachers rated “highly effective” were Freedom Elementary (87.5 percent), McNeal Elementary (84 percent) and Stewart Elementary (84 percent).

Lincoln Middle and Harllee Middle both had no teachers rated highly effective, and Sugg Middle School only had four teachers (8.5 percent) who were rated highly effective. All three schools are Title 1 schools.

There is as much variation between districts across the state as there is in the schools in Manatee. In Okaloosa County, 97 percent of the teachers received highly effective ratings. In Putnam County, just 6 percent of the teachers were highly effective.

Why is everyone effective or highly effective?

Teachers have been evaluated on a curve for the past two years, due to the new state tests that were released in 2015 without clear metrics for success, according to Ryan Saxe, the district’s executive director of curriculum and professional learning.

Teacher evaluations in Manatee are calculated by measuring three data points: 16.7 percent is based on a professional development plan, 50 percent on observations done by the school leader and 33.3 percent is based on student growth.

Saxe said the 98 percent of teachers with effective or highly effective ratings can be attributed to a memorandum of understanding between the teacher’s union and the district, signed in 2015.

The 2015 agreement was put into place to prevent the transition to the FSA tests from detrimentally affecting teacher evaluation scores. According to the agreement, no teacher in 2014-15 could receive less than effective on student growth, and teachers in 2015-16 who scored less than effective on their student growth scores would have their actual score averaged with an effective score.

“There was not enough information from the state for teachers to know what to do,” Saxe said.

The evaluations from this year will not be scored on a curve.

Saxe said one of the most beneficial aspects of the evaluation system is the observation from the principals.

“We watch the trends from the teacher observations and then provide specific training for the teachers,” Saxe said.

Manatee no different from other counties

Manatee is by no means an outlier in having almost all of its teachers rate effective or highly effective.

Six school districts in the state have 100 percent of their teachers in one of the two categories. Only one district has less than 91 percent of its teachers in the top two ratings: Gadsen school district. In Gadsen, a relatively staggering 21 percent of its teachers either need improvement or are unsatisfactory.

Don Falls, a teacher at Manatee High School, said the high numbers are indicative of a pointless system.

“It’s a system that essentially ensures everyone will do well, like every kid in Little League gets a trophy,” Falls said.

But he also said cynics should not assume the school district is hiding anything.

“Skeptics will look at that (98 percent number) and they’ll come back and make the wrong correlation, that there are a whole bunch of bad teachers and kids are paying the price,” he said. “This system doesn’t tell you if teachers are good, bad or indifferent. You can’t read anything into it — that we have the best teachers in the world or that we have this massive group that is ineffective. The whole thing is meaningless.”

Fiscal impact

It is yet to be determined if Manatee’s teacher evaluations could affect them financially because the school district and union are at an impasse in negotiations. But both the union and the district have performance-based raises in their proposals. The union is asking for highly effective teachers to receive $1,200 raises and effective teachers to receive $900 raises. The district is offering $900 for highly effective and $600 for effective.

The district’s impasse hearing was held on Jan. 25, and briefs from both sides were due Friday. The magistrate will issue his report within roughly two weeks of receiving the briefs. His recommendation is not binding, and if both sides do not agree to it the school board will make the final decision.

In recent years, teachers with highly effective ratings were eligible for the Best and Brightest scholarship, which awards bonuses of up to $10,000 to teachers who scored in the 80th percentile on their SAT or ACT score and were highly effective. Gov. Rick Scott has proposed a $58 million plan to entice new teachers into the profession that does not include funding for Best and Brightest.

At the Feb. 13 meeting of the Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition, Orange County school officials presented a report that concluded linking teacher pay to student performance has had no affect on student performance in Orange.

“Evidence for these systems’ effectiveness is scarce. ... Performance pay systems are not an effective way to increase student achievement,” the report stated.

The DOE releases statistics on teacher evaluations each February. Earlier this year the DOE and Manatee had conflicting reports as to how many teachers had not been evaluated in the 2015-16 school year. At the time, the state said roughly 30 percent of Manatee’s teachers were not evaluated, a claim disputed by district officials, teachers within the district and Manatee Education Association head Pat Barber. In its final report for 2015-16, the DOE reported that 8.2 percent of teachers did not receive an evaluation.

Saxe said that figure was more like 6 percent — or roughly 200 teachers — who did not receive an evaluation.

This story was originally published February 18, 2017 at 2:38 AM with the headline "Everyone is a winner. Nearly every teacher in Manatee County receives high marks on annual evaluation.."