Auburn Hills, Mich. – September 17, 2018 – Munetrix, a public sector solutions provider offering data management, analytics and reporting tools for states, local governments and public school districts, has released its new Munetrix Student Learning Objectives (SLO) version of the Educator Evaluator tool to simplify customer compliance with Michigan Public Act 173, which governs educator evaluations for teachers and administrators in the State of Michigan.
Signed into law in 2015, PA 173 requires that educator evaluations be conducted annually, and that they incorporate student growth data as a significant component, beginning with 25% of the evaluation in the 2015-2016 school year and growing to 40% in 2018-2019*. Teachers and administrators with three consecutive years of highly effective ratings may receive biennial reviews in place of annual reviews, making the 2018-2019 results particularly critical.
The SLO tool is an addition to the Munetrix SGP Educator Evaluator, which is used for national and state normalized assessments like NWEA and M-STEP and was introduced in April 2018. The SLO tool incorporates the six methods of determining student success as identified by the Michigan Department of Education:
- Meeting Average Change of Previous Years by Quintile
- Exceeding Average Change of Previous Years by a Percent
- Simple Average Growth
- Meeting a Proficiency Score • Group Effect Size Score
- Tiered Growth Projections
Both Munetrix Educator Evaluator tools put school roster data in a usable format for these state- required evaluations, according to Munetrix Vice President and Co-Founder Buzz Brown.
“The Munetrix SLO & SGP Educator Evaluator tools simplify the onerous task of manipulating data from multiple sources while performing teacher evaluations in the 2018-2019 school year,” Brown said. “School roster data was designed to link a student, teacher and classroom for every hour of every day during the school year; the rosters were not intended to calculate teacher evaluation scores to reveal three-year trends and cannot be used in their current format for calculating educator scores. That’s where the benefits of the Munetrix Educator Evaluator tools and data science come into play.”
The Munetrix Educator Evaluator tools are foundationally based on the Michigan Department of Education’s model and integrated into the Munetrix platform using the company’s data science expertise, allowing school administrators in most cases to load their own data and obtain results.
“Without these tools, teachers will have to spend hours performing data cleansing and manipulation, which takes time away from the classroom,” Brown said. “Michigan school districts simply cannot afford to have their educators spend time manually inputting data for this purpose.”
The Munetrix SLO Educator Evaluator can be used for any assessment data that provides preand post-test scores, making it easy for users to calculate teacher evaluations. This is especially useful in certain grade levels and in subject areas where national and state normalized assessments are not available, such as art and band, and with special education.
Since its founding in 2010, Munetrix has continued to build its reputation among government and school district leaders. Munetrix is one of only two approved vendors prequalified by the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget to provide data analytics tools for reimbursement to both Michigan public school districts and cities and is the only resource provider that generates a fiscal wellness measure. In 2016, the company received “Readers’ Choice Top Products” recognition for the second consecutive year from K-12 leaders’ education trade publication, District Administration. Munetrix has also been named a GovTech100 company for three consecutive years, an annual index by Government Technology magazine that highlights the top 100 companies in the country serving government in unique, innovative and effective ways.
*Pending legislation, Michigan HB5707, is seeking a one-year reprieve on the 40% student growth data for the 2018-2019 school year, asking instead that the percentage be kept at 25% through this school year.
