by Nicole Piscitani • Oct. 16, 2024
Senate Bill (SB) 168’s main objective was to provide school districts flexibility and improve local control on various areas within education law. From its inception, the bill was known as the Education Deregulation Bill. One area that received multiple modifications was teacher licensure and evaluations.
Teacher licensure has been tweaked and changed several times over the past few years. In June 2023, the biennial budget changed grade bands. During the pandemic, substitute teacher laws were changed to provide school districts with local control and flexibility, and those changes carried forward into today as school districts still face hiring challenges. SB 168 made the following additional changes.
Alternative Evaluation Framework
For nearly a decade, the State Board of Education has been responsible for developing an evaluation framework that school districts must use to rate Ohio’s educators and administrators. The Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) and Ohio Principal Evaluation System (OPES) are frameworks that use a variety of inputs to assess educators and administrators. The changes in SB 168 provide a school district with two choices. The school district can continue to use the State Board framework or use local control to develop its own framework. However, the collective bargaining unit would need to approve the framework.
Temporary out-of-state teaching licenses
As Ohio continues to experience teacher hiring challenges, the legislature heard concerns that out-of-state teachers who moved to Ohio were frustrated with obtaining an Ohio teacher’s license. SB 168 attempts to combat the teacher shortage issue by allowing the State Board to issue an educator license to qualified out-of-state educators. The license would be a temporary one-year, nonrenewable out-of-state educator license. Additionally, the license would be valid for teaching the grade levels and curriculum areas named in the license. The State Board receives the request from the employing school district, and the qualified applicant of good moral character would need the following:
- Is an out-of-state applicant, holds a valid out-of-state teaching license, has a bachelor’s degree, has completed an approved teacher preparation program and a licensure exam, but who has not yet completed Ohio’s licensure exam.
- Has completed at least six of the required 12 semester hours of coursework in the teaching of reading for educators requesting an early childhood, primary, middle childhood, pre-K through eight, intervention specialist, early childhood intervention specialist or primary intervention specialist license. Any remaining coursework must be listed as a limitation on the license and must be completed before the out-of-state licensure expires.
Consistently high-performing teachers and school counselors
Consistently high-performing teachers are exempt from additional coursework or professional development for licensure renewal. SB 168 changed the law to allow school counselors to qualify as consistently high-performing. The State Board determined the definition of consistently high-performing teachers in the rulemaking process, and SB 168 took that definition for teachers and codified it into law. This means that the Ohio Revised Code (RC) defines consistently high-performing teachers and school counselors and exempts them from those coursework and professional development licensure renewal requirements. Revised code defines “consistently high-performing teacher or school counselor” as a teacher or counselor who receives the highest level of performance rating in the teacher or counselor’s evaluation for at least four of the past five years and, for at least three of the five years of the current licensure cycle, meets at least one, or any combination, of the following:
- holds a valid senior or lead professional educator license;
- holds a locally recognized educational leadership role that enhances educational practices by providing professional learning experience at district, regional, state or higher educational level;
- serves in a leadership role for a national or state professional academic education organization;
- serves on a state-level committee supporting education;
- receives a state or national educational recognition or award.
Additional teacher licensure provisions
As indicated, SB 168 made numerous teacher licensure changes. The following are additional provisions:
- Requires each municipal school district and its teachers’ labor organization to endeavor to include in the district’s evaluation procedures the development of a professional growth plan or improvement plan and a final summative conference to discuss the results of the evaluation.
- Changes the minimum degree required for a senior professional educator license or lead professional educator license from a master’s degree to a bachelor’s degree.
- Requires the State Board to issue an alternative resident educator license to an individual who holds a master’s degree, and passes an exam, in the subject area to be taught.
- Permits the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (ODEW) to establish alternative pathways for bachelor’s degree holders to obtain an educator license to work as an administrator or superintendent and requires the State Board to issue a license to an individual who completes one of those pathways.
- Requires the ODEW to develop and recommend to the General Assembly a proposal for an apprenticeship program for school principals.
- Changes the grade band specification for an educator license from grades six through 12 to grades seven through 12.
- Limits which unlicensed employees of a district, service center or school must be enrolled in Rapback to those whose employer reasonably determines their position may involve routine interaction with a child or regular responsibility for the care, custody, or control of a child.
- Exempts districts from entering into supplemental contracts with teachers assigned to teach classes outside the normal school day if certain conditions related to the teacher’s daily hours of instruction and collective bargaining are satisfied.
- Requires an eligible institution with an early childhood teacher preparation program to permit a student employed by an early learning and development program to complete required student training as a paid employee of that program.