Hernando County educators are questioning the state's new teacher evaluation system - despite good ratings.
According to Bay News 9's partner newspaper the Tampa Bay Times, more teachers in Hernando County were rated "effective" or better than anywhere else in the Tampa Bay area under the new system.
Like other educators in the Bay area and statewide, officials in Hernando say the new format is unfair.
Hernando education officials say the data is "skewed."
Nearly 99 percent of Hernando County's teachers were evaluated as "effective" or higher for the 2011-12 school year under the system, with 16.9 percent rated as "highly effective," according to data released last week by the Florida Department of Education.
Only 1.3 percent of the district teachers were ranked as "needing improvement" or "developing." None were "unsatisfactory."
Officials said in many cases, the evaluation system assesses teachers based on factors other than the students in their classrooms.
They say some are rated based on students they have not taught because they teach courses that do not feed into the state testing system.