By Stu Johnson
Richmond, KY – Who better to teach in Kentucky classrooms than those students who fared well in the classroom. House Education Committee Chairman Carl Rollins says and teacher recruitment effort should focus on enticing better students to become teachers.'
"And that used to be the case. I think back when women had limited options. I know my wife was a math teacher in high school and I've asked her if she had other options back then, what would she have been? And she would have been an engineer because she was very talented in math," said Rollins.
Rollins says there needs to be a better system for evaluating public school teachers. He says the current system relies on classroom observations which are too in-frequent.
"If you're a tenured teacher, I think it's one observation every three years. That's not good enough, especially if a principal wouldn't have the content knowledge to evaluate a certain type of teacher," said Rollins.
Rollins is optimistic such a task can be achieved during this winter's 30-day legislative session.
"If we can address that with relatively small costs or no cost to at least start to develop a teacher evaluation system and school leader evaluation system as well not just teachers, I think we can probably come to agreement on some of the things that should be in there," said Rollins.
In developing a new system for evaluating Kentucky's teachers, Rollins says educators and administrators should be involved.