NYC Educator: UFT's Defense of APPR Examined

NYC Educator: UFT's Defense of APPR Examined:

UFT's Defense of APPR Examined

UFT negotiated and supported the law that ushered in the odious new evaluation system, which has everyone freaked-out. Their advice to freaked-out teachers is "Calm down."  The argument leadership offers in favor of the new system is this--under the old system the principal, alone, determined whether you are satisfactory or unsatisfactory. That was the only measure.

Now, there are multiple measures. 40% is so-called objective measures, and the other 60% is based on observations, artifacts, and who knows what else. The fundamental problem with the UFT argument that this is an improvement is that the principal can still have you rated poorly. If principals holds sway over 60% of your rating (or even 55% after kids take 5) it's a fairly good bet that they can make sure you don't hit the magical 65 that will render you "developing."

On the other hand, you may believe that principals enter rooms with no prejudices or experiences and perfectly apply low-inference observation techniques. Of course if that is the case, I'm not precisely sure why we'd need multiple measures. But let's humor that notion for a moment. Every principal is a paragon of virtue and records only what is actually observable. Thus the 55 to 60 points of observation or whatever will be precise in every way, and will not vary one iota from one principal to the next.

The problem is, if that happens to be the case, there's still another way you can be declared ineffective and be placed on a one-way rail to Palookaville. If you fail the so-called objective measures, your perfect principal will have no power