Florida DOE releases teacher evaluations

About 15 percent of Duval County teachers were rated as highly effective and 76.5 percent rated effective in the 2013-14 year, according to the Florida Department of Education statistics released Wednesday.

The state released preliminary personnel evaluations of Florida's public school teachers is based on a controversial Value-Added Model (VAM) data.

MORE ONLINE: County-by-county teacher evaluations

The state initially resisted efforts to make the VAM results public, but the Florida Times-Union won a year-long battle with the state department of education to release the individual VAM scores of the state's public school teachers.

For most teachers, the VAM scores account for 50 percent of their overall score. The other half of a teacher's evaluation is based on elements including principal observations and student surveys.

According to Duval County Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, principal observation scores are protected one year before they are released.

Teachers are completing the process of verifying the student data included in the evaluation this week, he said.

However, last week, some teachers got an early look at the individual VAM scores of their colleagues due to an error that occurred while upgrading a system program, district officials said.

Duval Schools Chief of Human Resources Sonita Young said the glitch allowed some teachers to briefly access the scores before they were taken down.

According to Young, the number of highly effective teachers in the district last increased by about 3 percent from the previous year and the number of effective teachers increased by more than 9 percent. The number of teachers rated as "needs improvement" also increased slightly by about 1 percent from the previous year.

According to the Florida Department of Education, about 3 percent of Duval County teachers were rated as "developing" and .01 percent rated as "unsatisfactory" in 2013-14 –- a slight decrease from the previous year, according to Young.

Neighboring counties mostly had better teacher scores. 

Nearly 50 percent of St. Johns County teachers earned a highly effective rating and less than 1 percent were rated needs improvement.  Clay County had 78.7 percent of teachers rated highly effective, all the rest were effective -- none rated developing. Three-quarters of Nassau County teachers were rated highly effective, but nearly 1 percent were classified either needs improvement or developing.

The statewide average rated 42.4 percent highly effective, 55.3 percent effective, 1.3 percent needing improvement and 1 percent either developing or unsatisfactory.

In Union County, 100 percent of the teachers were rated highly effective. 

In a written statement, Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart reiterated that the evaluation were "just one of many tools" used to analyze teacher performance.

"There's no doubt that some of our school districts still need improvement and we should not have any failing schools," she said. "This is why we're continuing to examine many factors that affect student outcomes, including our assessments."