One day after releasing letter grades for districts and schools, the state Department of Education on Wednesday released results of the Compass teacher evaluations. Officials said the reports show that districts and schools making academic progress have higher expectations for educators.

According to the report, 63 percent of Calcasieu Parish teachers are highly effective, 34 percent are effective proficient, 2 percent are effective emerging and less than 1 percent are ineffective.

Statewide, 43 percent of teachers are highly effective, 49 percent are effective proficient, 8 percent are effective emerging and 2 percent are ineffective.

The Compass system, which has state requirements but is designed and led by local districts, evaluates educators through classroom observations and student achievement scores.

State Superintendent of Education John White said during a media teleconference that the results alone aren’t an accomplishment, but rather are a means to accomplishing student achievement. Compared with last year’s results, teachers are receiving a wide range of performance feedback, which he said is positive.

“The state saw a general trend upward in terms of the ratings,” White said. “While we should be very proud of our teachers that achieved a highly effective rating, we should also note that the inflation of highly effective scores outpaced the growth of student achievement scores this year, meaning that our own evaluations of ourselves as adults grew faster than did the ratings of students.”

White said inflation is something administrators need to look at seriously because educators shouldn’t be evaluated more generously than students. “We are not doing our kids any favors,” he said.

White said districts that have high expectations and use the highly effective rating for teachers who are truly at the highest level are giving them ambitious growth targets and are seeing higher results with students.

“This is a significant lesson from this year’s report because of what it means to use Compass well and what it means to not use it well,” he said.

White said the state is working on measures and recommendations to help alleviate flaws in the evaluation system.

Johna Rion, Calcasieu School Board Compass coordinator, said the district tried to make sure evaluation results were accurate. Rion said the district implemented student learning targets. She said every teacher must give students a common assessment and pre-test and post-test measures to see if they are reaching those targets.

“This process was created by our teachers and is aligned to our curriculum,” Rion said. “It forces a teacher to teach to the curriculum because that is what is tested. We monitor progress all year long.”(MGNonline)