Ryan De La Rosa

Newswriting
6/9/13
New Teacher Evaluation System



The United Federation of Teachers representative, Carmen Quinonez, came
to P.S 333 on Tuesday to discuss the new plan of teacher evaluation that will be used
to rate K-12 classroom teachers this upcoming school year in New York.
She began by discussing the point system of this new rating plan. Under this
plan the teachers will be rated highly effective, developing, or ineffective on a scale
from 0-100. The teachers will get 20 points on the states measures of student
learning growth such as improvement on standardized tests. Another 20 points will
be based on locally selected measures of students performance and the remaining
60 points will come from classroom observation and other measures of teacher
performance. All of these measures are said to be finalized in October 2013.
Some of the complexities of the system come from the variety of ways that
student learning can be assessed. The state growth scores, which come from the
state ELA and Math tests can be used for the state measures only for teachers of
those subjects from grades 4 and up. Other state tests like the science exams or the
Regions can be used for teachers in those subjects. For the rest of the teachers
whose students do not take the standardized tests, their 20 points of state measures
will come from the department of education or the state. They must develop student
performance assessments that are reflective of the common core standards or find
alternative forms of assessments to be used.
Carmen Quinonez stated that the local measures of student learning are
equally complicated. A committee consisting of four union selected members and
principal appointed members at each individual school will select a measure or
measures from a list of state approved options to acquire these 20 points. The same
local measure of student learning will be chosen by the same process for grades 4
and up teachers of ELA and Math if the department of education does not create
performance assessments for these subjects.
The final 60 points will come from the observation cycle of teachers.
Teachers will be observed using the Charlotte Danielsons framework, which
consists of 22 parts. The principles along with other administrators who will
conduct the classroom observations will be trained on all 22 components. There are
four main domains within this framework, which are planning and preparation,
classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities. All of these
domains and components are going to be used to support and evaluate teacher
practice. Carmen went on to explain that teachers will be able to choose how they
are going to be observed and for the first time the principals will have to give them
feedback following each observation. Their options vary from six informal 15-
minute observations to three formal observations, which would consist of pre and
post observation meetings.
After Carmen addressed these issues a couple of questions arose from some
teachers at the meeting. Ruth Rivera, a 3
rd
grade teacher at the school, asked what
would happen if a teacher was given an ineffective rating. Ms.Quinonez informed
her that an independent validator will observe the class of any teacher rated
ineffective three times over the course of the following school year to provide an
objective second look of the principals decision. Other questions came about the
effectiveness of teachers performance due to classroom behavior, special education
students and other factors.
Carmen concluded by stating the plan limits the use of high stakes test scores
in evaluations and gives teachers a voice in how they observed and what student
performance measures are used. Also the new system is intended to support the
work done inside the classrooms. This plan will be in effect this upcoming school
year in September.