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The Council for Educator Effectiveness is planning to release its final proposal for a teacher evaluation system before it officially expires at the end of the month, but it is still putting some final touches on its report and wants to send that out for review, Deborah Ball, chair of the council, told the State Board of Education at its meeting Tuesday.

Without revealing details, Ms. Ball said the council believes it has developed a plan that will allow review of teachers even in cases, as now, were state standards are changing or in courses where there currently are no state standards.

The system also had to be something districts could actually implement, Ms. Ball said.

"We were juggling all the time how much money will there be, how much time is there for this and will this be fair to everyone," she said.

The goal of the system also is not to weed out the worst teachers, but to show each teacher where he or she can improve, she said. Districts and the state then need to ensure professional development is available to help those teachers overcome their shortcomings.

"Useful feedback isn't, 'You are not a skillful teacher,'" she said. "You would have to have focused professional training."

Ms. Ball said the least effective teachers are also the least of the system's problems. "The most we talking about is 5 percent of the teaching force," she said. "What we're concerned about is the next group up. They're good at some things; they're not as good at other things."

That group, she said, can improve with the right evaluation and instruction.

One thing the report likely will have is a recommendation that the observation include both administrators and peers.

"One wants to have some sympathy for the high school principal who might have been a middle school social studies teacher and is now being forced to evaluate a high school math class," she said.

The system would allow that principal to make some valid observations, but "you want someone observing at least some of the time who is familiar with the subject matter," she said.

While the plan is to have the Legislature approve the plan in short order and have it in place for the 2014-15 school year, Ms. Ball also warned that it would likely need some tweaking once in place. "It might take a few cycles of building an educator evaluation system to get it working perfectly," she said. "We might have to plan to stick with it for a while until it gets better and better."

CHARTER SCHOOL OVERSIGHT: It is still unclear what guidance the board might have for the Legislature in adjusting the charter school laws. The board split 4-4 on a proposal that was designed allow the Department of Education to resume its prior practice of not providing school district numbers to new charters until they had completed applications.

A recent attorney general guidance said the department was overstepping its legal authority in not issuing the numbers within 30 days of receiving an application.

The board voted on the resolution only because board member Lupe Ramos-Montigny (D-Grand Rapids) raised concerns that the board was not moving on the issue. She joined three other Democrats in supporting the resolution.

But board member Dan Varner (D-Detroit), who seconded her motion to call the question on the resolution, opposed it, arguing the department had yet to provide him a list of items that were essential to having a completed application.

While supporters of the resolution said the requirements were laid out in statute, Mr. Varner and some others countered those requirements might not be reasonable.

One sticking point was a physical address. While the department was requiring that, some charter supporters had said that was not always possible to provide until the charter had an approved application to provide to a landlord to show it had the authority to lease a building.

Mr. Varner was concerned the policy could give advantage to charters backed by management companies that had real estate arms.

He said again that his preference would be to get all schools, traditional and charter, away from having to provide their own properties and facilities.

The department is expected to come back with more suggestions on the issue in August.

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The Education Achievement Authority has completed its first year of operation, and it has left some students without the information they need to move on to higher education, a student and a parent

representative told the State Board of Education at its meeting Tuesday.

Donovan Smith, a junior at Mumford High School, said his grades

have dropped from just shy of a 3.0 to about 0.2 largely because his teachers have not been putting his grades into the EAA's computer system.

"My report card's missing two or three classes," Mr. Smith said. "That's really a problem."

A grandparent, who submitted a statement through a spokesperson but asked not to be named for fear of reprisal against her granddaughter, said similar errors on her granddaughter's report card left her ineligible for Upward Bound college orientation program.

Marianne McGuire, a former Detroit teacher and State Board of Education member, said she had other students with similar stories who, for a variety of reasons, were afraid to come to the meeting Tuesday.

The board did not, as is its practice, engage in discussions with those who appeared for public testimony, but did ask John Covington, chancellor of the EAA, to attend its August meeting to talk about the issues raised Tuesday and other concerns raised about the district for failing schools during its first year of operation.

Board member Michelle Fecteau (D-Detroit) urged the board to also invite EAA teachers to testify. "I think these teachers, and some of the students I've talked to as well, they've convinced me it's worse than my reservations," Ms. Fecteau said.

Superintendent of Public Instruction said he had heard about the problems in the EAA, as well as about the positive things happening, as he had for a number of other districts around the state.

A spokesperson for the EAA did not have a comment in response by Gongwer's deadline.