99 percent of Baldwin educators are ‘effective’

Ninety-nine percent of Baldwin educators were deemed “effective” or “highly effective” in the 2012-13 school year according to Annual Professional Performance Review results released by the New York State Education Department last week.

According to the NYSED, each classroom teacher and building principal must receive an overall rating of “highly effective,” “effective,” “developing,” or “ineffective.” The rating is based on a single effectiveness score (from 0-100 points) that is calculated based on the scores received by the teacher or principal in each of the three subcomponents: state growth, local student achievement, and “other measures of educator effectiveness,” like evaluations and a portfolio of work they’ve accomplished.

In Baldwin, 416 educators were evaluated, with 89 scoring as “highly effective” (21 percent), 322 were named “effective” (77 percent), five as “developing” (1 percent) and zero placed in the “ineffective” category.

Superintendent James Scannell first saw these numbers about a year ago, he said, so their recent publication was no surprise. But one thing that was new to him was seeing how Baldwin stacked up against the rest of county school districts. On average, 60.8 percent of Nassau County educators scored as “highly effective,” 37.2 percent as “effective,” 1.6 percent as “developing,” and .4 percent as “ineffective.”

Scannell said he was pleased with Baldwin’s standing. “I thought, relative to other districts, we were very comparable,” he said. “We had a very small number of teachers who were identified as ‘developing.’”

Seeing nearly all of the district’s educators score “effective” or “highly effective” was nice to see, Scannell said. “This illustrates that we have really great teachers here in Baldwin,” he said. “Teachers who care about kids, support kids and are willing to work in conjunction with parents to help kids learn.

“To a certain extent I’ve always known that,” he added. “I don’t need APPR to tell me that.”

Scannell recalled that former Superintendent Dr. James Mapes frequently commented that Baldwin had the highest percentage of teachers who he felt did a good job than any other district he worked in.