OPINION

Teacher evaluation system enshrines tests over learning

A Journal News editorial

Critics say New York's Annual Professional Performance Review functions the opposite of how it was intended: It fails to accurately measure teacher performance, and makes it harder, rather than easier, to remove bad teachers. Like the rap against Common Core, public education leaders say the implementation was too fast; the system enshrines testing over learning; and the goal was really chasing federal money rather than ensuring education quality.

Harrison Superintendent Louis Wool and Valhalla Superintendent Brenda Myers joined an Editorial Spotlight interview Tuesday that outlined their concerns with the evaluation system and their frustrations to work with the state to fix APPR. The two were among eight members of the Lower Hudson Council of Superintendents who signed a recent Community View, "APPR fails teachers," that called the evaluation system "a governmental travesty of significant proportion that has wasted over $46 million of your state tax dollars, and untold millions more in local districts across New York."

APPR's problems, and the state's reticence to address them, mirror New York's rocky implementation of Common Core standards. The state steams ahead, or offers piecemeal accommodations, as those impacted the most are ignored, at best, when they point out the flaws. (New York Education Commissioner John King last fall "suspended" public meetings on Common Core after parents were loudly critical, saying the sessions had been co-opted by "special interests"; and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, amid criticism about APPR, offered legislation to hold teachers harmless from poor student scores on Common Core-based exams for two years, but has yet to sign his own bill.)

And like Common Core, the New York teacher evaluation system is coupled with testing from the start.

As Myers explained, "it's all tied to Race to the Top," the federal grant program that awarded New York $700 million after the state adopted Common Core learning standards and a teacher evaluation system that linked test scores to performance.

Wool said the state must do better. That means forming a panel of all stakeholders, from superintendents to teachers union members to state Education Department representatives, to determine "what would a high-quality teacher evaluation system look like," Wool said. "If we want to figure out how to remove incompetent teachers," that's a different discussion. So far the Education Department has all but ignored the Lower Hudson Council of Superintendents' independent study of APPR that outlined the system's flaws.

Cuomo's recent characterization of New York's education system as a "public monopoly" has rattled many educators. Wool said all the rhetoric just creates division, and important issues such as the struggles children in poverty face and the problems of high-needs districts are just ignored. Public education, he said, is "what a thriving democracy needs."