Nahant braces for new teacher evaluation system

NAHANT – With new state educator evaluation changes on the horizon, Superintendent Phil Devaux said Nahant will have to work to make the one-size-fits-all requirements work for the small district.Every district in Massachusetts will be facing the new evaluations set by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for superintendents, administrators and teachers come fall. But Devaux said it may be difficult for Nahant to cater some of the tools of the evaluation, while keeping equal standards as the rest of the state.?The dilemma we have is that they treat Nahant the same way they treat Boston,” said Devaux. “The rules aren?t different for a small district.”Devaux said some of the difficulties lay with evaluating new teachers versus those with tenure and basing surveys on anonymity in a district where everyone knows each other. “The elements will be common, but not identical,” he said. “You can negotiate the number of times you do school classroom visits, but you have to do the classroom visits.”Devaux said the good news lay in that the state was listening to feedback from individual districts, because they agreed to push back some of the deadlines for evaluations after districts balked at the new standardized requirements.Jude Shanahan, the president of the Nahant Teacher Association, said she?s never seen such drastic changes to teacher requirements. “It?s going to be a lot of work for everybody,” she said. “A lot of work for teachers and a lot of work for the administration.”Principal Diane Mulcahy said implementing the changes will be difficult at first, but it will be positive in the way that teachers will have input in terms of setting their own goals. “It?s a good thing to grow and change,” said Mulcahy.The new evaluation system will start on the first day of school.Kait Taylor can be reached at [email protected].