KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The Knox County, Tennessee school board will vote this week on the proposed termination of four teachers, based on a new evaluation system that has deemed them unfit to be in the classroom.

That’s twice as many teachers as were fired in 2010, before the new statewide evaluation process was in place.

Board members believe this is evidence that the evaluation system is doing what it was designed to do – separate good and bad teachers so school officials can act appropriately.

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The evaluation system, implemented about two years ago, requires annual evaluations for all teachers, according to a report from WBIR. Teacher effectiveness is ranked on a scale of 1-5.

In the past teachers only underwent formal evaluations twice every 10 years.

If a teacher receives a low ranking and is deemed ‘ineffective,’ they may participate in the Intensive Assistance Program (IAP) to try to improve their skills.

After the completion of the program, if a teacher does not show improvement, school boards may take action to terminate them.

“I think one of the key differences is, historically, it took years and years and years and years to demonstrate ineffective teaching and we know just one year’s loss for a kid is hard to make up,” Knox County Board of Education President Karen Carson told WBIR.

A good example is a 29-year teaching veteran in Knox County schools, who is one of the four facing termination by the school board this week.

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According to the story, he was first identified as ‘ineffective’ in the 2009-2010 school year, before the new evaluation system was in place. As a result, he went through the IAP program twice and received an evaluation which showed he actually declined in effectiveness after the first round.

All in all, it took five years for the district to identify the ineffective teacher, move forward in an effort to improve his skills, and determine whether to proceed with termination. Never mind the 20-plus previous years that he snuck under the wire with no rigorous evaluation program in place.

Under the new system, he would have been identified as a problem teacher last year, put in the IAP program this year and could have been fired at the end of the 2013-14 academic year, if he were still deemed ineffective.

“I think (the new system) makes it obvious who should and should not be in front of our kids,” Carson said.