Setting The Record Straight On Teacher Evaluations: The Appeals Process
(This is the second of two posts on the new teacher evaluations. The first post focused on the overall scoring of the evaluations and the role of standardized exams.)
The recent agreement to clarify and refine the New York teacher evaluation law took up an issue that has a special importance for New York City public school educators– the appeals process for ineffective ratings on end-of-the-year summative evaluations. Readers of Edwize know that last December the ship of teacher evaluation negotiations for the 34 Transformation and Restart schools sunk on the rocky shoals of this very issue, when Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC Department of Education refused to negotiate a meaningful and substantive appeals process. For there to be renewed progress on those negotiations, as well as on the negotiations for the evaluations of all New York City public school educators, the issue of the appeal process had to be resolved.
The agreement settled the issue of the appeals process for New York City by guaranteeing vital and indispensable due process rights in the teacher evaluation process. With these rights, the educational integrity