The House Education Committee amended and approved HB 1980 earlier this week, which creates a comprehensive new rating system for teachers, principals and non-teaching professional employees. The committee also approved two amendments to the bill. The first amendment moves all dates within the bill back one year, makes several technical corrections, clarifies that previous evaluations will be discontinued from use, but does not make them “null and void,”? ensures that  “at least”? is removed from the provisions regarding percentage of teacher performance based on student achievement and ensures that any changes made to the teacher evaluation after the original design must go through the regulatory review process. The second amendment provides for inclusion of cyber and charter schools, intermediate units and area vocational technical schools in the use of the evaluation created by the bill. This amendment also makes the technical changes necessary to allow for inclusion of chief administrative officers from the school entities.