“Effective” scores the product of preparation

All Oceanside and Island Park teachers and principals were rated “highly effective” or “effective” on the Annual Professional Performance Review, or APPR. A total score of 91-100 is “highly effective,” while a total score of 75-90 is “effective.”

In the Oceanside School District, 63 percent of the teachers and principals were rated “highly effective.” The remaining 37 percent were rated “effective.” This means out of the district’s 426 educators, 269 are “highly effective” and 157 are “effective.”

Oceanside Superintendent Phyllis Harrington credits the time her administration spent working with staff and preparing them for the classroom visits and teacher observation section. This section is part of the Measures of Educator Practice section, which makes up 60 points of the 100-point scale used to grade teachers. The other 40 points comes from the Student Learning section, which includes test results and other student grades.

“We’ve worked for two years with an APPR committee,” Harrington said. She added that her staff and the teachers studied the different rubrics used for evaluation.

Harrington said that the work that the school district put into obtaining the scores was more important than the end result.

“The work has gotten deeper and richer,” Harrington said.

In Island Park, 55 percent of the teachers and principals were rated “highly effective.” The remaining 45 percent were rated “effective.” This means out of the district’s 73 educators, 40 are “highly effective” and 33 are “effective.”

“We were very pleased with our teachers and principals performance,” said Rosmarie Bovino, Island Park Superintendent. “We did a tremendous amount of professional development in a number of areas.”

Bovino said her district used the Marzano framework for the section based on teacher evaluation and strategies, which emphasizes enabling children to visualize concepts and ideas.

“We used an electronic method of collecting data called iObservation,” said Bovino. “If a teacher is observed and an element is level 1 or level 2, they can go online and click on a video and see what the strategy is supposed to look like. It creates a great springboard for conversation.”

As for the Student Learning section, Bovino said her district trained for the Northwestern Evaluation Association assessments in Math, Science and English with samplers from the state that had parts of the new version of the exam.

The Nassau County total for “highly effective” and “effective” were 60.8 percent and 37.2 percent, respectively, while the New York State total was 51 percent “highly effective” and 44 percent “effective.”