Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) has been a big topic at our Board meetings, around our district, and in educational news around the state.

Words from Dr. Frank Alvarez, Rye City Schools Superintendent:

 

Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) has been a big topic at our Board meetings, around our district, and in educational news around the state. It is a state requirement calling for a structured system for evaluating teachers and administrators in which specified components account for certain percentages of a final evaluation score. APPR, in concert with the Common Core Learning Standards and the New York State Teaching Standards, is changing the educational landscape.

 

The Board adopted our APPR plan at the September 11 meeting and has submitted it to the state. Our plan, now pending adoption by the New York State Education Department, reflects hours of discussion, collaboration, and negotiation between central office administrators, teachers, and principals. A great deal of time was spent over the summer developing the plan and training administrators, and we are now in the process of training our teaching staff. It has been a lengthy course, but we are very pleased with the plan we agreed upon, and I feel it will put our district in a better place.

 

The performance review requires every child to be pre-assessed in most subjects with respect to the most important learning they will experience in those areas during the year. Students will also be assessed at the end of the year so that we can analyze growth and achievement. Many of our assessments are based on the integration of the New York State Common Core Learning Standards, which will guide our curriculum development going forward. However, assessment is just one of the factors that ties into our evaluations under APPR.

 

Two of the district goals I have communicated to the Board and community – Student Achievement and Teacher Effectiveness – are at the core of our APPR plan. Throughout the development process, “doing what is best for students” and “focusing on effective instruction” have been at the forefront of our decision-making. Teacher and administrator evaluations will be very different under APPR, but consistent to both is student performance. Student growth and achievement will comprise 40 percent of teacher evaluations, with the same percentage of administrator evaluations based on student and teacher achievement.

 

The remaining 60 percent of our teacher evaluations will be based on instructional performance using the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching 2011, which identifies four domains of instruction and four levels of performance that the state will factor into its score.

 

Our administrator evaluations, in addition to being 40 percent contingent upon teacher and student achievement, will be 60 percent based upon the Multidimensional Principal Performance Rubric. This considers the following components: shared vision of learning; school culture and instructional program; safe, efficient, effective learning environment; community; integrity and fairness ethics; political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.

At the end of the school year, every teacher and administrator will receive a HEDI score, placing them in one of these four categories: Highly effective, Effective, Developing, or Ineffective. I anticipate that the implementation of our plan, the introduction of the New York State Common Core Learning Standards, the integration of New York State Teaching Standards and strong curricular content will result in greater success to the district. We expect APPR to be an evolving process and look forward to implementing our initial one-year plan as a productive learning experience.