2024 Senate Bill 797

Mackinac Center Analysis

SB 797 amends the Revised School Code to restore teacher effectiveness, as measured by a performance evaluation, as the primary determining factor in personnel decisions including teacher promotion, retention, dismissal and compensation. It prohibits tenure from serving as the primary or a determining factor in these personnel decisions. It eliminates teacher evaluations as a subject of collective bargaining. It restores the number of evaluation rating categories from three to four. It returns to 40% (instead of 20%) the portion of the evaluation to be based on student growth and assessment data, and requires half of the student data to come from standardized assessments, when available. It requires teacher certification decisions to be tied to effectiveness. The bill aims to strengthen educator accountability by tying personnel decisions to job performance, as measured by an evaluation system that strongly considers a teacher's impact on student outcomes in addition to content knowledge and classroom instruction.

SB 798 amends the language pertaining to the conditions required for probationary teachers to achieve tenure, based on teacher evaluation ratings. Reflects the proposed changes to the Revised School Code to increase the number of evaluation ratings from three to four, with highly effective being the highest rating and ineffective being the lowest rating. It adds performance-based compensation as a factor that would not be discontinued for a teacher that is demoted. The proposed changes are necessary to support the adoption of a more rigorous evaluation system that is tied to tenure decisions and performance-based compensation.