Reinventing APPR |
On Board Online • February 25, 2013
By Timothy G. Kremer
No law is immutable. Laws are explicated by regulators, interpreted by the courts, and, sometimes, revised by legislatures. Since New York’s Legislature passed a law that made Annual Professional Performance Reviews (APPR) one of the cornerstones of New York’s education reform agenda, it’s become obvious that some tweaks are needed.
The fact that APPR agreements are collectively bargained makes the process quite onerous and complicated. That is unlikely to change. However, here are three suggestions that could improve the current system:
1. Untie state aid increases from APPR approval.
To serve the cause of school reform, we want districts to devise the best possible APPR agreements, not cobble together a compromise before an arbitrary deadline. While the threat of losing state aid increases has some motivational value, imposing that consequence punishes the innocent. It hurts schoolchildren and shifts costs to local taxpayers and only indirectly affects the negotiators who, we can assume, have been bargaining in good faith. Withholding state aid increases adds insult to injury because the APPR law (while supported by NYSSBA) is a classic example of an underfunded mandate. A recent NYSSBA analysis revealed that the cost of implementing the state’s new teacher and principal evaluation system often exceeds the Race to the Top funds provided to school districts. As noted on page six of this issue of On Board, a lawsuit has been filed that challenges the legality of withholding of state aid increases for failure to meet APPR deadlines. The Legislature has the opportunity to address this issue before the courts act.
2. Enact a state default model as an option for schools.
The current APPR law provides a host of choices for school districts and unions – from selecting student growth measures, local assessments and rubrics, to negotiating an appeals process. Local choice is good, but lawmakers could improve upon APPR by giving local school districts the option of selecting a state model plan as a default. The default plan could be carefully crafted by the State Education Department in conjunction with key stakeholders – school boards, superintendents, teachers, principals, parents, even students. Schools could use the default plan as is, modify it to fit their districts, or negotiate their own separate plan, as they did this year.
Having a state model plan as an option would reduce the amount of negotiation and the complexity of the process, plus ensure some level of consistency among teacher and principal evaluation criteria, should educators move from one district to another. A statewide option would be a good choice for districts that do not have the resources to devote to painstaking negotiations. At the same time, it would preserve local control as long as the plan is not imposed as a default. The last thing we need is for the state to impose binding arbitration on school districts.
3. Perform a study of the APPR law in five years.
NYSSBA has long supported using student achievement data as a way to improve academic performance. That’s why in a few years we should have an independent evaluation of the APPR law and the systems in place to see if it is doing exactly that. Are school districts identifying exemplary teaching practices and sharing them among faculty? Are we getting ineffective or developing teachers the training, coaching or mentoring they need to become better teachers? Are students learning more, as measured by their performance on relevant tests? Those are just a few of the questions we need to answer as we implement the new evaluation system.
The study could follow a cohort of students, teachers and principals to see how their performance – and their evaluations – have changed over a period of time.
I realize it’s too soon to begin such a study right now. But lawmakers could put the framework for a study in place. It’s going to take time to establish protocols, hire a vendor, and select districts to participate.
As Eric Randall writes on the front page of this issue of On Board, “initiative fatigue” is plaguing our districts. There has been a lot of change, quite fast. As the people responsible for both setting district goals and ensuring that school reform is implemented at the local level, school board members have a unique perspective, and I’d like to hear it. Contact me at tim.kremer@nyssba.org with your thoughts on how to improve the APPR process. Let’s do what we can to ensure that APPR serves its intended purpose – to raise student academic achievement.