School districts are graded, students are tested and with legislation signed by Governor John Kasich in late June means teachers will also be scored and that evaluation will determine their pay.
The district-by-district evaluation of teachers will begin in the 2013 school year using the states teacher evaluation system.
Some districts are hiring an outside person to do the evaluations.
Lima superintendent Jill Ackerman says they've not had that discussion, but she believes it would be better to have a principal who knows their staff do the evaluations rather than an outsider.
Lima has 400 teachers and Ackerman says evaluating each and every teacher, every year, would be nearly impossible.
Ackerman says the system could be problematic in that deciding whose a good or bad teacher, who gets a raise, who doesn't, is subjective. She says during their training to become a credentialed evaluator, they simulated an evaluation of a teacher and all the evaluators came up with different results.
She says there needs to be more discussion.
Another issue is funding. If for example, a high percentage of Lima teachers get high scores, where does the money come from for higher pay, or do some teachers get unfairly cut to find extra dollars? Ackerman says it's an unfunded mandate from the state.
