New York’s costly experiment in test-based educator evaluation is crashing
On September 30, 2011, Carol Burris, then the award-winning principal of South Side High School in New York, wrote about the creation of a new New York State teacher and principal evaluation system in an Answer Sheet post titled, “The dangers of building a plane in the air.” That piece, one of many about the system known as APPR, detailed the problems with the way New York State education officials were designing and intending to implement it — and she predicted that it would ultimately fail. Her predictions, not surprisingly, have now officially come true.
This is how that 2011 post started:
Buckle your seat belts and hold on for your life. Teachers and principals, welcome to APPR Airlines flight 2011. Your journey on the ‘plane to be built in the air’ just took off from New York’s Albany airport.
This description of the New York teacher and principal evaluation system known as APPR is not my critique of an incomplete and untested evaluation system. Rather, it is the description provided by the state Education Department itself. Across New York State, all of the school and district leaders who evaluate teachers are being pulled out of their schools for mandated, taxpayer-funded training in this APPR teacher and principal evaluation system.The scripted curriculum given to local trainers by the Education Department begins with a bizarre video of smiling mechanics wearing unopened parachutes, building an unfinished plane in flight—all of which the trainers liken to APPR, which means Annual Professional Performance Review. As the narrator tells us, “Some people like to climb mountains. I like to build planes…in the air.” You can find the video here.It is labeled a ‘funny video’ on YouTube. Not a school leader in the room laughed. Likening a system that is now driving professional evaluations and student testing to what could have been an episode of the Three Stooges did not amuse. I felt sad. Leaders of integrity and courage do not let unfinished planes with students and teachers aboard off the ground.As the day progressed, we learned just how unfinished that plane is.
Here is a new post about the fate of APPR across New York from Burris, who retired as principal this past June and is now the executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education Fund. She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. In 2010, she was selected as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State.
By Carol Burris
The controversial 2015 New York teacher evaluation system rushed into lawby Gov. Andrew Cuomo, will be put, for all practical purposes, on hold for the 2015-16 school year. According to a report from North Country Public Radio, 90 percent of all school districts in New York State were granted hardship waivers by the State Education Department because they were unable to successfully negotiate new evaluation systems by the November 15th deadline. And so the Board of Regents is expected to punt the deadline still further into the future, making it nearly impossible to evaluate teachers and principals using the new system this school year.
You can expect that within a week or so, the governor will have his new education adviser, Jere Hochman, draft a statement that will attempt to New York’s costly experiment in test-based educator evaluation is crashing - The Washington Post: