MREA understands that two major factors contribute to a student’s academic success: parental involvement and the quality of the teacher in their classroom. To attract high quality professionals in the classroom, Minnesota needs to ensure that districts can offer competitive compensation packages.

To ensure a quality teacher in every classroom for every child MREA supports legislative action to:

• Fund the ability of districts and teachers to create collaboratively developed evaluation plans that apply state goals and mandates to local contexts. Any requirement for a portion an evaluation to be based on student performance should be defined locally.
• Use multiple measures for any requirement for student performance in the state default evaluation plan and address the wide variety of teaching positions within school districts. These multiple measures could include teacher and student attendance, student academic performance, student discipline referrals, and satisfaction surveys and overall building academic performance.
• Amend the QComp program to align with new state teacher evaluation mandates.
• Expand the funding model of QComp to all districts to carry out the new state teacher evaluation mandate and allow local districts to design and provide mentoring for new teachers, and ongoing professional development opportunities for all teachers, including job embedded professional learning communities.
• Direct the Board of Teaching to re-address its positions on MTLE exams cut scores and time limits on teacher testing to ensure there is appropriate licensure credentialing for all needed licensed teaching positions, and immediately address the World Language and Middle Math MTLE exams.