We have no doubt that the state’s education department had the best intentions when it set up an evaluation system to rate teachers in the public schools, but the educators on the North Shore who oversee some of the state’s highest rated public schools are less than impressed.
The superintendents called the ratings that were recently published “highly ineffective” and said they are already doing everything the state is attempting to do and doing it better.
“We don’t place a lot of value in the [state’s] numbers because there’s still a lot of mystery as to what exactly they mean,” Roslyn Superintendent of Schools Dan Brenner told our reporter.
The Annual Professional Performance Review for the 2012-13 school year rated teachers based on a 0-100 score that measured student performance on state exams, state learning benchmarks, other locally-selected learning measures, classroom observations and parent testimonials.
However the individual teacher data was not released because of state law protecting privacy.
To put it bluntly the state will tell the districts that they have some ineffective teachers teaching the kids but won’t say who they are. How useful is that?
Fortunately the schools on the North Shore are highly rated.
We are concerned that 20 percent of the state’s rating is based on test results. This will only add to the pressure on teachers to teach to the statewide tests rather than focusing on real education.
It also seems to us that schools located in higher income areas will have an advantage because the students come from more stable homes.
Although the state is right to encourage higher education standards, the APPR doesn’t appear to be a step in the right direction.
