I just went through the teacher provisions of Hawaii's RTT application, and they rival Connecticut's for placement at the bottom of the list.
HI admits that currently tenured teachers get evaluated once every five years (!). It hopes to change that along with its rules governing tenure, performance pay, and the removal of low-performing teachers.
But it hasn't done so yet. It has a task force looking into these issues. Their recommendations then have to be embraced by the state department of education. Then they need to be approved by the union and negotiated through collective bargaining. Then they might be implemented.
In 2015-2016.
No joke.
It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that a very small number of states were actually racing. This program didn't have the transformational effect on states that many of its boosters have claimed.
--Andy Smarick