Valley Stream principals challenge teacher evaluation plan

Nine Valley Stream public school principals have signed onto a letter asking state education Commissioner John B. King Jr. and the Board of Regents to delay and change a new teacher evaluation plan that links educator ratings to student test scores.

The letter, co-authored by South Side High School Principal Dr. Carol Burris and Sean Feeney of The Wheatley School and sent on Nov. 2, urges the state to use school-wide achievement results in evaluating teachers and principals, pilot and adjust the system before implementing it on a large scale and use performance “bands” — not numbers — to rate education professionals. Two-thirds of Long Island’s public school principals and a growing number of educators from across New York state, have signed it, including all four principals in District 13, all four from the Valley Stream Central High School District, and one from District 30.

Earlier this year, New York pledged to implement the system, known as the Annual Professional Performance Review, in an effort to secure nearly $700 million in federal Race to the Top funds. In it, teachers would receive one of four ratings: highly effective, effective, developing and ineffective, based on a 100-point scale that weights student exams at 20 percent, local measures of student achievement (determined by collective bargaining) at 20 percent and classroom observations (and other criteria that would also be determined by collective bargaining) at 60 percent. Teachers who are rated “ineffective” for two straight years could be cited for incompetence and fired, through an expedited hearing process.

Burris said that after negotiating with New York State United Teachers, at the urging of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Regents changed two provisions affecting the student test score component of the evaluations at the last minute — increasing their weight to 40 percent and adding a clause that if a teacher is rated “ineffective” because of test scores, he or she cannot be rated “effective.”

“We wholeheartedly endorse the idea of evaluations,” Burris said, “but we worry that when student test scores take front and center, they will destroy the relationship between students and teachers. The tests are designed to measure student learning — that’s what they’re all about. I would never want a teacher to look at his or her class and say that one child… is a threat to my job.”

Central High School Principal Dr. Joseph Pompilio said that he applauds efforts to improve teacher and principal accountability, but said that the new regulations are the wrong way to do it. Simply put, he said, the new evaluations are being rushed. “You can do all of this in a pilot program and work out all of the kinks,” he said.

Pompilio said that while the new evaluation system isn’t ground-breaking, it does, for the first time, grade teachers on a 1 to 100 scale, and places a specific value on student test performance. That, he says, is where the expectations for teachers become unfair. Student performance is not necessarily reflective on a teacher, Pompilio explained. “You have a kid who has an attendance problem,” he said. “How do you account for that in a teacher’s status? How do you take something so human and quantify it?”

Burris questioned the rating system. “They’re going to put numbers on people. Do you know a cop or a nurse who gets a number?” Burris asked. “What’s the difference between a teacher who gets a 70 and one who gets a 72? It’s sheer silliness. I don’t want to give our teachers a number, I want to make them teach better. The professional way to do it is through observations and conversation. That is part of that 60 percent, but even that will now get converted to a number.”

That conversation already happens in Valley Stream, Pompilio said, noting how student achievement data is used to make teachers more effective. He said he has several meetings every year with teachers to go over student test data and review areas where students of a particular teacher struggled with certain skills or concepts. That, he said, is a productive way to improve teaching, not by giving educators a numerical rating. “There is anxiety already about these scores being attached to their livelihood,” he said of teachers.

The expense of the new system comes at a difficult time for schools, Burris noted, as local districts prepare to deal with a new 2 percent state tax cap, pay for successful property tax challenges and cope with decreasing state aid.

District 13 Superintendent Dr. Adrienne Robb-Fund said the new evaluation process does place a financial burden on districts. Her four principals will each have to spend 10 days at training this year for the new APPR. Those 40 total days will cost the district several thousand dollars, she said, and that doesn’t include training sessions for central administration.

In a written statement, Commissioner King said that the new plan secured New York’s share of federal Race to the Top aid and is “essential” to the state’s application to waive No Child Left Behind mandates. “Research shows that, with limited resources, the best way to improve student performance is to make sure every classroom is led by a highly effective teacher, and no one can argue that our resources aren’t limited,” he said. “Teacher evaluations are essential to making that happen.

 “The principals do raise some legitimate concerns that we are carefully addressing in the design of the evaluation system,” he continued. “But the biggest concern I have is helping every student graduate from high school college- and career-ready. That’s not happening now.”