By Shawn Magrath
Sun Staff Writer
smagrath@evesun.com
NORWICH – While the New York State Common Core has recently put education reform in the spotlight, teachers at the Norwich City School District said during a school board meeting held Tuesday that they’re simultaneously battling a separate issue – the Annual Professional Performance Review.
The APPR, implemented in 2000 to evaluate probationary and tenured teachers, was amended in 2010 as part of the federal Race to the Top initiative which provides competitive grants to schools that meet certain criteria. Though newly enacted changes to the APPR may look good on paper, according to NCSD Superintendent Gerard O’Sullivan, it’s a different story in the classroom.
“It really puts teachers under a tremendous amount of stress,” he said in a recent interview. “Those evaluations seem to be doing more harm than good ... For the state to throw so many new requirements at school districts all at once has been a recipe for disaster.”
Members of the Norwich School Board were presented with an outline of the APPR from a teacher’s standpoint during their monthly meeting at the Norwich Middle School on Tuesday. The synopsis included a description of work required by all teachers (barring teaching assistants and teacher aids) who receive an evaluation, as well as a breakdown of how teachers are evaluated and the challenges they typically face in the process.
The APPR is conditioned by a state rubric that rates teachers as being “highly effective,” “effective,” “developing,” or “ineffective.” These ratings are based on three primary facets: student growth on state assessments or other measurable methods of assessment; locally selected measures of student growth or achievement; and multiple measures of effectiveness – such as questions asked, student responses, student participation and the teacher’s demeanor – that are observed by the principal during an evaluation.
The New York State Department of Education (NYSDE) requires that teachers be assessed twice every year, once during an announced evaluation and once in an unannounced evaluation. Each assessment is followed up by a one-on-one conference with the school administrator to highlight various feats and failures of the lesson. Teachers are then required to scan and upload all documents used in their evaluation to an online database accessible by NYSDE.
Schools are also mandated to implement a multi-year APPR plan approved by NYSDE. The APPR must include teacher improvement plans for developing and ineffective teachers, training for evaluators, appeals process for evaluations, and disciplinary action for teachers who receive two consecutive ineffective ratings.
All in all, it’s an intensive process, explained math teacher Eric Cunningham; one he said that demands an increased amount of leg work, time and effort that could be better used in the classroom.
“It’s important to understand the APPR is a separate issue from the Common Core. The Common Core is seen in lessons used during the APPR but they are not the same thing,” he added. “Not being in the classroom, it’s not something that can be easily seen or easily described ... It’s not just about the amount of time it takes teachers to do this, but also the amount of time it takes away from our focus on teaching.”
Art teacher Kathy Pfeifer pointed out that while teacher evaluations have been in place for years prior to the new APPR, the amended process has significantly bolstered the workload for both teachers and administrators.
“The lesson plans we need to put together have really expanded,” she said, issuing school board members an example APPR containing more than 60 pages of documentation, lesson plans, and student handouts. “It can be a number or papers and documents we are scanning and uploading. This is a much more lengthy process than it used to be.”
Added School Board member Perry Owen, “My concern is that teachers have different styles and this doesn’t seem to address those different styles.”