Schools are being given a chance for the first time to use student tests to help evaluate teachers, but the state's school boards group is telling administrators not to try it.

A bill, signed into law by Gov. Jim Doyle Monday, would drop a state prohibition on using standardized tests scores as a part of evaluations but would still prevent schools from using them to discipline or fire teachers. That's left the Wisconsin Association of School Boards concerned that even including the information in a teacher's evaluation could make it more difficult to take action against that teacher later, lobbyist Sheri Krause said.

"If that student assessment data is included in the evaluation, that essentially nullifies that evaluation for the purposes of discharging or removing an ineffective teacher from the classroom," she said.

Doyle dismissed those concerns at the bill signing at Wright Middle School. Critics, he said, had long sought to use the student data to help decide teachers' performance and potentially their pay.

"What we have come up with here is a very strong bill," Doyle said. "It goes to 75 percent of what they wanted to get."

President Barack Obama visited Wright Wednesday to lay out the steps that states needed to take to win part of $4.35 billion in federal "Race to the Top" stimulus funds for education, including removing the "firewall law" against using student testing in evaluations. Doyle said his administration had checked carefully with the U.S. Department of Education to make sure the new law went far enough to ensure Wisconsin qualified.

To use the testing scores, a school district would have to develop a teacher evaluation plan that includes many factors besides test results and an explanation of how school officials will use the evaluations to improve student learning. Krause said districts would also have to bargain with teachers unions over additional factors that they do not have to negotiate now, including the identity and numbers of teacher evaluators.

Ken Syke, a spokesman for the Madison School District, said the district will need more time to decide whether it will seek to use the testing data in evaluations.

Joe Quick, a lobbyist for the district, said the first chance the district would have to do so would be late 2010 or early 2011 after the current teachers contract expires.

Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state teachers union - which supported the teacher evaluation law - said that she believed school districts that use test scores in evaluations will still be able to discipline or fire teachers. They will just need to be careful about making sure the scores aren't used as a factor in the decision, she said.

"It's not that those kinds of things cannot be addressed. You just have to be very intentional about how you do it," Bell said.

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