Arbitration Hearings to Determine Educator Was Properly Evaluated

With the enactment of Act 82 of 2012, the General Assembly drastically revised the method for evaluating and rating Pennsylvania’s educators, as in 24 P.S. Section 11-1123; 22 Pa. Code, Chapter 19. Under this revised framework, Pennsylvania joined multiple other states in requiring that student performance data be used, at least in part, to evaluate and rate classroom teachers.

While the incorporation of student performance data into classroom teacher evaluations seems simple in theory, in practice, it has been quite the opposite. Act 82 and its implementing regulations established a moving target for school administrators. As a result, any school proceeding to an arbitration hearing challenging the termination of a classroom teacher for unsatisfactory teaching performance must engage in additional efforts during the arbitration hearing to hit that moving target, and to prove to the arbitrator that the evaluation is both procedurally and substantively sufficient to support the termination.