*** Please note that RVCTA members should have received this letter from building representatives in early December. ***
In early November, you may have heard that principals from across Long Island posed a letter on APPR. The RVCTA was very excited by the APPR position paper, since it expressed the numerous flaws with utilizing students’ scores in order to evaluate teachers. The purpose of this letter is to keep you abreast of our thoughts as they relate to APPR and this principals’ letter.
· We agree that administrators and teachers must be accountable as professionals for the jobs that they do. However, our members would not compromise their principles in order to achieve a better “grade.”
· State law now requires 20% of a teacher’s yearly evaluation is based on student performance on state standardized tests, and an additional 20% is based on “local assessments.” This testing is counter-productive, expensive, harmful to our children, and costs districts money that they cannot afford to spend. This spending comes at a time when state aid is being cut, expenses are increasing, and a tax cap is being imposed on us.
· APPR is a reality we need to understand and address. APPR is still a “work in progress,” and has not been finalized for our usage. We have not selected a rubric for evaluation, and RVCTA representatives will examine each rubric before agreeing to the one best suited to our members. Once a rubric has been selected, we will notify our teachers accordingly so that they may be well versed in the district’s expectations. We will also work with the district to ensure professional development will be put in place so all RVCTA members understand this new evaluation system.
· The principals would like to use a group metric for evaluating individual teachers. When the statewide APPR task force met, the idea of group metrics was rejected by every member of the state sub-committee on untested subjects, which had teacher and administrative (including principal) representatives, and by the task force as a whole. It appears that the reason the principals are now willing to accept it is they will be evaluated based on scores of their entire school (the group metric). The RVCTA will think very carefully before agreeing to any petition that makes this approach a goal.
· Our members may hear reference to the “Colorodo Growth Model” as a basis for APPR. This bell curve will be constructed annually, with half of our students’ scores falling to the left of the curve and the other half to the right. Thus, we will always have half of our student scores falling to the left, no matter how well they perform. At a recent Hofstra symposium, a superintendent from another Long Island district spoke to 20% of the bottom teachers being fired. He concluded by saying we are rating and sorting, not evaluating. This is not an appealing thought, but again, we must consider that our APPR does not need to be finalized before our contract expires. Many districts are dealing with the flaws of this process now, so we have the benefit of time in our implementation. NYSUT and virtually every stakeholder on the statewide Task Force petitioned for the first year not to count. This would have provided a piloting year and the opportunity to learn from mistakes.
· NYSUT negotiated to be certain that assessments should not be counted as heavily as it is in other states. When NYSED and the Board of Regents misrepresented the law in formulating the regulations, NYSUT took them to court in June, and won. We ask where the Principals’ Association was when this occurred.
The RVCTA has been and continues to attend informational sessions on APPR. We are working proactively to learn from our brothers and sisters in other districts, about their successes and failures thus far. We are thankful for NYSUT in providing us with a wealth of timely information and invite you to learn more on this topic by visiting your statewide union’s site, found at http://www.nysut.org. We will post additional important points for your review at our website, located at http://ny.aft.org/rvcta .
Should you have questions, comments or important ideas, we request you contact your building representative, who will advise the RVCTA vice president.
