School News

Most teachers making the grade

State releases evaluation data from ’12-13

Posted

The public can now know what school districts have known for the past year: how teachers are doing. New York state recently released teacher evaluation results for the 2012-13 school year, and the numbers showed that a vast majority of educators in Wantagh, Seaford and Levittown are doing a good job.

Teachers were ranked in one of four levels — highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective. District rates have been made available, but results for individual teachers were not released.

Wantagh had all but one of its teachers in the top two levels. Out of 259 teachers, 225 — or 87 percent — were labeled highly effective. The rest were effective, and one developing.

“I think it speaks to the tremendous job we do educating our students in Wantagh,” said Tom Vereline, president of Wantagh United Teachers. “Some people laugh at the numbers and ask how so many teachers can be effective and highly effective, but the truth is, ineffective teachers are weeded out very early in their careers and not retained by districts.”

Levittown had similar success. One out of 600 teachers was rated ineffective. The remainder were in the top two levels with 491 teachers, or 82 percent, labeled highly effective.

“The Levittown School District hires the best and most qualified teachers available,” said Superintendent Dr. Tonie McDonald. “Our Board of Education and administration work to support them in becoming master teachers by providing them with meaningful professional development that is backed up by data.”

In Seaford, 95 percent of teachers were either effective or highly effective. Nearly 200 educators were evaluated and 72 of them, or 36 percent, received the top rating, though that mark is below the state and county averages. A majority were designated effective.

Ten teachers were rated as developing. Superintendent Brian Conboy said that the district put teacher improvement plans in place for each one of them, and he believes that most, if not all, will have moved into one of the top two levels when the 2013-14 evaluations are released.

Conboy said the district showed improvement on its test scores in 2014, and that benefitted the teachers. Twenty percent of a teacher’s evaluation is based on standardized assessments.

“It’s an extremely convoluted formula to determine the effectiveness of a teacher,” he said, adding that he is not convinced the new system properly indicates a teacher’s strengths and weaknesses.

Vereline pointed out that teacher evaluations, known as Annual Professional Performance Reviews, are nothing new. The middle school teacher noted that his work has been reviewed by his supervisors every year during his 21-year career. However, he said the new system which partially ties evaluations with test scores is flawed.

“The three-day state ELA test my sixth graders take accounts for 1/60 of the school year,” he said, “but it accounts for one-fifth of my APPR score.”

His counterpart in Seaford, Matthew Fields, president of United Teachers of Seaford, agreed. “Linking state assessments to a teacher’s evaluation is inappropriate,” he said. “Students are not a product on an assembly line.”

Fields added, “There was nothing wrong with Seaford’s evaluation system before the state saw fit to intervene.”

Sixty percent of an evaluation score comes from the district administration’s observation of its teachers. Wantagh Superintendent Maureen Goldberg said these reviews are a regular occurrence throughout the school year.

“The Board and administration provide ongoing support and professional development,” she said, “including new teacher orientations, structured and rich mentoring programs for new teachers, and in-district programs for all teachers facilitated by principals, directors and supervisors.”

Although the numbers have not been made public yet, Goldberg reported that the district had no teachers rated ineffective or developing in the 2013-14 school year, and the district takes “great pride” in that.

Vereline said that the district administration and union work together to help teachers who fall into one of the lower two rating categories. He expressed his gratitude for district officials for not treating the evaluation process as a “gotcha” system, but rather a chance to help professionals get better.

McDonald said that while Levittown has no specific plans for how teacher ratings will be used to make instructional decisions, she wants highly effective teachers to share their knowledge and skills with their colleagues.

Vereline said that is most meaningful feedback for teachers comes from the observations by administrators. “They are constantly walking around the buildings, coming into our rooms and seeing us in action,” he said. “The feedback we get from them is far more important than any number we get from the state.”