We have now finished midterms and Regents exams and the second semester is under way. With that comes the challenge of navigating through our newly adopted, highly publicized Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR). The first challenge that our teachers face is the administration of a “pre-test” in nearly all of our courses.
This pretest is a short exam lasting less than one period, which is designed to test how much content our students know before they are taught it throughout the course of the year. At the end of the year, those same students are given a post-test, typically their final exam. Both tests are aligned to the standards and therefore aligned to each other as well. The goal is for them to score higher on the post-test, which will in-turn show academic gains or “growth.” This has been a somewhat arduous task for our teachers, taking multiple hours to not only design the exam in conjunction with fellow department members but also to ensure that each question is aligned to a curriculum standard(s) before it gets submitted to the superintendent for approval.
At the same time, our teachers are working on their Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). An SLO essentially identifies the learning goals for the year and quantify a learning goal as to how much knowledge should be gained by the end of the year. For some, that means getting all of their students to pass the final/Regents exams (Achievement) and for others it means measuring the amount of growth from the pre-test to the post-test (Growth). Every teacher has to write two SLO’s, one that captures the majority of their students (51%), called the “State” growth measure and a second that the teacher not only gets a choice of who they measure but also what they measure, called the “local” component. At the high school, each of these is worth 20 out of the 100 total points on a teacher’s annual evaluation. This entire process must be approved by the principal to ensure the goals are appropriate, rigorous and aligned to the standards/curriculum.
The remaining 60 points of the evaluation is measured through the form of classroom observations. Each teacher will receive one formal classroom observation, lasting the length of a single class period. There will be a prescheduled pre and post observation conference with an administrator, where questions must be answered in advance referring to the preparation of the lesson and reflection of the lesson, respectively. There will also be a minimum of one and maximum of four unannounced classroom visits by the principal.
At the end of the year, a composite score out of 100 will be assigned to each teacher. A teacher scoring from 91-100 will be defined as Highly Effective, 75-90 as Effective, 65-74 as Developing and 0-64 as Ineffective. Please keep in mind the individual evaluations of teachers are strictly confidential, as is any personnel matter, meaning the score of a teacher cannot be given out by request.
There are many, many more details to the plan but for the purposes of grasping an understanding and avoiding confusion, I will leave those details to the practitioners who deal with it on a daily basis.
I hope this entry has helped all of those who have heard so much in the news about this but were uncertain what it actually means to their children.
This pretest is a short exam lasting less than one period, which is designed to test how much content our students know before they are taught it throughout the course of the year. At the end of the year, those same students are given a post-test, typically their final exam. Both tests are aligned to the standards and therefore aligned to each other as well. The goal is for them to score higher on the post-test, which will in-turn show academic gains or “growth.” This has been a somewhat arduous task for our teachers, taking multiple hours to not only design the exam in conjunction with fellow department members but also to ensure that each question is aligned to a curriculum standard(s) before it gets submitted to the superintendent for approval.
At the same time, our teachers are working on their Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). An SLO essentially identifies the learning goals for the year and quantify a learning goal as to how much knowledge should be gained by the end of the year. For some, that means getting all of their students to pass the final/Regents exams (Achievement) and for others it means measuring the amount of growth from the pre-test to the post-test (Growth). Every teacher has to write two SLO’s, one that captures the majority of their students (51%), called the “State” growth measure and a second that the teacher not only gets a choice of who they measure but also what they measure, called the “local” component. At the high school, each of these is worth 20 out of the 100 total points on a teacher’s annual evaluation. This entire process must be approved by the principal to ensure the goals are appropriate, rigorous and aligned to the standards/curriculum.
The remaining 60 points of the evaluation is measured through the form of classroom observations. Each teacher will receive one formal classroom observation, lasting the length of a single class period. There will be a prescheduled pre and post observation conference with an administrator, where questions must be answered in advance referring to the preparation of the lesson and reflection of the lesson, respectively. There will also be a minimum of one and maximum of four unannounced classroom visits by the principal.
At the end of the year, a composite score out of 100 will be assigned to each teacher. A teacher scoring from 91-100 will be defined as Highly Effective, 75-90 as Effective, 65-74 as Developing and 0-64 as Ineffective. Please keep in mind the individual evaluations of teachers are strictly confidential, as is any personnel matter, meaning the score of a teacher cannot be given out by request.
There are many, many more details to the plan but for the purposes of grasping an understanding and avoiding confusion, I will leave those details to the practitioners who deal with it on a daily basis.
I hope this entry has helped all of those who have heard so much in the news about this but were uncertain what it actually means to their children.