By Linda Borg
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The bill exempting all school employee evaluations from the public records act passed the Senate on a vote of 37 to 0 Thursday.
The bill was originally designed to apply only to teacher and administrator evaluations, but it was amended to include all school employees.
The Rhode Island Department of Education said that keeping the content of individual teacher evaluations private would ensure that teachers support the evaluation system, which is new.
RIDE said the bill would not preclude the release of aggregate data on teacher evaluations, much like the state releases student test scores without naming individual scores.