LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – If the state of Michigan is having an educational crisis in terms of student test scores, it is surely not due to the teachers. At least, that’s what a decade’s worth of teacher evaluations produced by school districts claim.

Teachers evaluations done by the local public school districts say that the quality of teaching in Michigan has been quite high.

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For example, in 2023-24, 43% of all teachers evaluated were found to be “highly effective,” the highest of four ratings, according to the latest year teacher evaluation data was available from the state. That was the highest percentage of highly effective teachers since teacher ratings began in 2011-12.

Since 2011-12, teachers have been evaluated by their school districts based on four ratings – Highly Effective, Effective, Minimally Effective and Ineffective. Starting this school year, the ratings were changed and reduced to three: Effective, Developing and Needing Support.

When the Democrats controlled the state Legislature in 2023, they changed how the teacher evaluation system worked.

The Michigan Education Association said in 2023 the change was made to “reduce competition and increase collaboration between teachers.”

Since the teacher evaluations began in 2011-12, no lower than 98% of all teachers evaluated have been rated either highly effective or effective, the two highest of the four ratings.

Since 2014-15, the teacher evaluations by districts across the state have reported that 0% of the teachers were found to be “ineffective,” which is the lowest of the four ratings. It should be noted there were some teachers rated as “ineffective”, but there were so few, it didn’t rate as above 0%. For example, there were 87 teachers in Michigan out of 104,658 evaluations that were given an “ineffective” rating in 2019-20.