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Schools

SSHS Principal Criticizes New Standards for Evaluating Educators

Dr. Carol Burris said the new process that began in September is flawed.

Hundreds of Long Island public school principals, including South Side's Dr. Carol Burris, are challenging the state Education Department and criticizing new standards for evaluating educators.

The new rules went into effect in September as New York State worked to win federal money under the Race to the Top program, which the White House said is designed to promote  "innovation, reform, and excellence in America’s public schools."

Teachers and principals are evaluated, in part, on student performance on standardized tests.

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“As building principals, we applaud efforts aimed towards excellence for all of our students. We cannot, however, stand by while untested practices are put in place without any meaningful discussion or proven research,” they say on a new website.

In a letter written by Burris to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in July, Burris said there are too many external factors for this new evaluation sytem to be viewed as accurate.

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"If we fail to invest in our schools and communities, even the highest-quality educator evaluation will lead to little success," Burris wrote. "We cannot ignore factors such as racially and socio-economically segregated schooling and its associated impact on student achievement, nor can we ignore factors such as inequitable funding."

Teachers and principals receive a rating of 0-100 with 20 to 40 percent of their score coming from their students’ test performance.

Burris said this system has high stakes consequences, both financially and on the education system as a whole.

"There is no question that educator evaluation systems based in large part on student test scores are unchartered waters," she wrote. "Yet the statewide systems are not pilots; they are full-blown mandates imposed on all public schools. What we are engaging in is a national experiment that is costly in public dollars attached to high-stakes consequences for educators and students alike."

The website, which includes a copy of an open letter, lists several objections to the system, arguing that tax dollars are being diverted from schools to testing companies, trainers and outside vendors; that the emphasis on evaluations will damage children as schools put too much focus on test results, and that educational experts say there is no evidence that such a system improves students’ education.

“We, principals of Long Island schools, conclude that the proposed APPR process is an unproven system that is wasteful of increasingly limited resources. More importantly, it will prove to be deeply demoralizing to educators and harmful to the children in our care,” the website says.

The letter was written by Dr. Sean Feeney, principal of The Wheatley School in East Williston and president of the Nassau County High School Principals Association and Burris. In July, Burris sent a memo to U. S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in July, outlining her objections to poor evaluation systems.

The state Board of Regents approved the evaluation system in May. “These evaluations will play a significant role in a wide array of employment decisions, including promotion, retention, tenure determinations, termination, and supplemental compensation, and will be a significant factor in teacher and principal professional development,” the state Education Department said at the time.

Educators are rated on this basis, the department said.

  • 20% -- student growth on state assessments or a comparable measure of student achievement growth (increases to 25% upon implementation of a value-added growth model);
  • 20% -- locally-selected measures of student achievement that are determined to be rigorous and comparable across classrooms (decreases to 15% upon implementation of a value-added growth model); and
  • 60% -- other measures of teacher/principal effectiveness.
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