NEW *Revised* Teacher Evaluations

[Chris_Wendt]

The NYS Board of Regents issued revised regulations for teacher evaluations in response to the Governor’s requests. It is intended that the new evaluation process will be in effect for all teachers in NY State with the start of school in September.

The new regulation enhancements include:

1. Weighting of student test scores is changed from 20% to 40% of the overall teacher evaluation

2. Increased the point spread and cutoff scores between proficiency levels so that an individual teacher must do well on both supervisory evaluations and test scores in order to advance to a higher proficiency level. The four levels, or rating categories, are:

• ineffective
• developing
• effective
• highly effective

3. Applies the new Teacher Evaluation to ALL teachers, instead of only to fourth-through eighth- grade reading and math teachers.

Although partially intended to facilitate elimination of the existing ”LIFO” (Last-In, First-Out) layoff procedures for teachers, this regulation does NOT change the civil service law which controls “LIFO”.

This regulation should make it easier to remove “ineffective” teachers from the classroom…
…without having to wait for a layoff to occur.

That would be better management!

Regards,

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

There is an article in Newsday today that Albany wants to centralize test scoring, eventually leading to taking it out of districts' hands. That makes sense. They cite cheating scandals that have happened in other states. With state test scores now part of teacher evaluations, it makes greater sense to move towards this.

Eventually, a Wantagh test could be scored by someone specifically trained to do so somewhere upstate. And, there was a comment about potential cost savings for districts. Although knowing state ed, they may forget they made this statement and get a high surcharge out of districts, lol.

I thought state test scores were 20% with the option to go up to 40% teacher evaluation weighting. I've heard from non-Wantagh teachers that the teacher evaluations have created a cottage industry of sorts with BOCES running workships on how to do write evaluations (Carl Bonuso being one of the teachers). Why would they get retired supers to do this, since given tenure, the evaluation process in schools has been a bit 'light'/meaningless in the past? And the teachers union (Randi Weingarten) is unhappy with the 'up to 40%' rule with local superintendents condemning losing control over grading their own students.

That doesn't make sense to me. State tests are an Albany project, so they might as well facilitate executing all of it i.e., scoring. And districts have loudly complained about increasing expenses related to it (the "unfunded mandates" you hear so frequently, yet they are balking about potential cheaper costs to get the same job done?

[lilly]

It was also announced last week that state ed is looking to take Regents scoring out of districts' hands. The target date is to develop and take a plan to do this to the state legislature by the end of this year.

Now if state ed can deliver the graded Regents within a few days to meet final year end report cards (um, colleges want 12th graders final report cards), that would be an act of God, lololol. Their performance in delivering timely NCLB-related 3rd-8th grade scores so that districts can use them as originally intended, a diagnostic tool, has been spotty to say the least.