Welcome to the Matrix: The New York State Board of Regents Begins to Create Yet Another New Teacher Evaluation Plan – By June 30th.
On Monday, April 13th the members of the Board of Regents and a packed audience listened to a lengthy description of the “enacted budget,” the education provisions of the fiscal year 15-16 state budget.
The 18-slide Power Point, “A Review of Education Policy in the Enacted 2015-16 State Budget” lays out the Commissioner’s view of the new law. The key question was asked by a new member, Regent Johnson, how much authority do we have under the law in designing a teacher evaluation plan?
The answer is unclear.
APPR Field Guidance, all 100-plus pages, spells out the intricate details of the current plan (Read here)
The growth formula on pages 10-11 was used in NYC in 2010 and has been “refined” for the NYS 2011. (Read here)
The members of the legislature told the Regents, you’re in charge.
Over the next month or so the actual authority of the Regents to craft the new regulations will emerge
The purpose of required grades 3-8 testing under No Child Left Behind is to assess student progress based on standardized tests and identify low performing schools, called “focus,” “priority” and “persistently lowest achieving,” aka “out of time” schools, and, under Race to the Top, create a teacher performance metric based on multiple measures including student test scores.
Over 700 schools in New York State are either “focus” or “priority” and in New York City 94 low achieving schools are in a Renewal category; show progress or face redesign or closure.
The adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) changed the playing field. As I have written before I did not read the standards more dramatically different than previous standards, the dramatic difference is that the standards are no longer aspirational goals. State tests were curriculum-based within the framework of standards, the CCSS tests are now standard-based tests, and curriculum is superfluous.
Some school districts, school districts with resources, purchased new materials and began to intensively train staffs, other school districts, school districts that stumble to meet day-to-day costs lagged. The enormous difference in district to district funding once again determines testing outcomes, the rich get richer at the expense of the poor.
For reasons that still elude me Commissioner King followed the “push off the end of the diving board” approach to phasing in the new, far more complex and difficult tests – the state moved from two-thirds passing to two-thirds failing. Teachers suddenly forgot how to teach and students forgot how to learn.
The Race to the Top application required a teacher evaluation plan: negotiations took months and the final plan required a numerical rating for each teacher on a 0 – 100% scale. The scale is divided in three sections, 20% based on student test scores, 20% based on a locally negotiated metric and 60% based on supervisory observations; however,the law requires that if a teacher received an ineffective grade on either student test scores or locally negotiated metric the teacher must be rated ineffective regardless of their composite score.
When the dust settled, in year one 51% of teachers were rated highly effective and 40% effective, only 1% received an ineffective rating. The numerical grades were confusing. The scores are “unstable,” wide swings from year one to year two, and, neither teachers nor principals have any idea how the scores were determined.
The student performance score section is a growth score: the incredibly dense formula matches teachers teaching similar students. If a teacher of very low Welcome to the Matrix: The New York State Board of Regents Begins to Create Yet Another New Teacher Evaluation Plan – By June 30th. | Ed In The Apple:
