NYSED Adds Detail to 3012c Law --WITHOUT THE LEGISLATURE Voting On It

 *NYSED subverts democracy in response to massive opt-outs

This just in : The New York State Education Department has issued a document that tells local school districts to create SLOs, in the context of missing data, due to the massive numbers of opt-outs. In particular read D99.

This is unsettling from a democratic perspective. They have just taken it upon themselves, in executive authority fashion, to augment state law, 3012c.

New York State United Teachers and Change the Stakes (acting as a good government group) ought to take the NYSED to court over this overreach of authority.

The full guidance document is available for download athttps://www.engageny.org/resource/guidance-on-new-york-s-annual-professional-performance-review-law-and-regulations

Please share widely . . .

NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

GUIDANCE ON NEW YORK STATE’S

ANNUAL PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW

FOR TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS

TO IMPLEMENT EDUCATION LAW §3012-c AND THE COMMISSIONER’S REGULATIONS

UPDATED: April 24, 2015

Questions added to April 2015 Guidance

D99. Due to unforeseen circumstances, our district/BOCES has a number of teachers who will not receive a State-provided growth score as expected. What should we do?

Education Law §3012-c requires all teachers and principals in a district/BOCES who are subject to APPR to have a complete evaluation each school year. State aid increases are linked to the Commissioner’s approval of documentation that a school district has fully implemented the standards and procedures for conducting APPRs in accordance with Education Law §3012-c and Subpart 30-2 of the Rules of the Board of Regents by September 1 (see Sections C31 and 32 of APPR Guidance). Pursuant to Education Law §3012-c, a complete evaluation includes a score and rating for the State Growth or Other Comparable Measures, Locally Selected Measures, and Other Measures of Educator Effectiveness subcomponents, as well as an Overall Composite score and rating. The Department’s longstanding guidance to districts/BOCES for teachers and principals of grades 4-8 ELA and math with close to the minimum “n” size of student growth scores needed to generate a State-provided growth score has been to set back-up SLOs for the State Growth or Other Comparable Measures subcomponent, in case there are not enough students, not enough scores or are unforeseen issues with the data to generate a State‐provided growth score (see Section D52 of APPR Guidance).

If your district did not suspect that a back-up SLO would be needed and due to unforeseen circumstances, your district/BOCES has teachers or principals who will fall below the minimum threshold of 16 SGP scores in that grade/subject, district/BOCES leaders must determine the processes that will be used to set SLOs (e.g., short-term SLOs, back-up SLOs) to ensure that all educators are evaluated. As a reminder, pursuant to Education Law §3012-c, all teachers and principals subject to evaluation must have a complete APPR each school year. Therefore, district/BOCES leaders must put back-up SLOs in place for all educators who you anticipate may not receive a State-provided growth score, even if this occurs later in the school year.

Many educators set short-term SLOs for a variety of reasons – maternity leave, high levels of mobility, low threshold of student scores on State assessments, etc. The Department recommends that all districts/BOCES consult with their local counsel regarding the implementation of back-up SLOs for APPR purposes. You may also wish to review Sections D12, D19, D24, D52, E10, and M31 of APPR Guidance, as well as the “Alternative Target Setting Models within SLOs” webinar for guidance on SLOs based on small class sizes.