ATLANTA (AP) -- Georgia Schools Superintendent John Barge is telling federal education officials that he will not implement a teacher evaluation system that might not work and could lead to lawsuits.
Barge wrote a letter to federal officials Friday saying it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to implement the system after being warned by lawyers that the use of student surveys in the evaluations creates a risk of lawsuits by teachers.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia's pledge to implement a new teacher evaluation system was one reason it won a $400 million federal grant through the Race to the Top program. But Barge says that grant application was written by a different administration and was Georgia's best estimate of how the state could achieve the goals in the application.