Schools
Pelham Teacher Review Plan in Place
Pelham schools submit annual professional performance review plans to state before Sept. 1 deadline.
Pelham school officials have filed all of the paperwork required to the state for the district’s annual teacher and administrative review process.
The paperwork for the new teacher and administrator evaluation system on Aug. 31, before the state education department’s Sept.1 deadline. The annual professional performance review, or APPR, system was passed into law by state lawmakers in 2010 in order to qualify for federal Race to the Top funding.
The state mandates that two of the three components of the new teacher evaluation plan are based on students' test results: 20 percent is based on state tests and 20 percent is based on local assessments or other measures. The remaining 60 percent is based on classroom observations—at least two per year and at least one unannounced.
Teachers will be graded as either highly effective, effective,developing or ineffective under the plan. Teachers rated ineffective or developing will be placed in mandatory improvement plans.
“I would be surprised if we got any ineffectives, because we do such a thorough job of weeding people out that by the time we get to point where we’re continuing employment, they probably wouldn’t be here, ” Dennis Lauro, superintendent of Pelham schools, said during the Aug. 29 school board meeting.
In the plan, Lauro and Peter Giarrizzo, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, will act as the lead evaluators responsible for evaluating teachers and principals. The district’s principals and assistant principals will act as secondary evaluators responsible for evaluating teachers.
Laura said the district’ would have passed the review plans sooner because officials initially thought the law would kick in after teacher contract lapsed in 2014. But earlier this year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers approved legislation calling for school districts to have the new APPR plans in place by this school year.
“That made all of us move into action, we met with the teacher’s union first, which took the longest time,” Lauro said. “It worked very well, it was just a large amount paperwork.”
Copies of the performance review plans are available in the PDFs to the right of this story.
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