Board of Education adopts new APPR plans

The Marcellus Central School District Board of Education on Sept. 18 adopted the district’s new Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) plans for teachers and principals.

The plans now will be submitted for approval to the New York State Education Department. Districts must have an approved APPR plan in place by Jan. 17, 2013, or they will lose their share of this fiscal year’s education aid increase. The APPR review process takes about six to eight weeks.

“Marcellus teachers and administrators worked tirelessly over the past year to craft a plan that keeps students – and their success – at center stage,” Superintendent of Schools Dr. Craig J. Tice said. “This represents a culmination of genuine collaboration on the part of our educators and the district.”

Board members also voted to recognize the following administrators as certified lead evaluators for the district:

• Cynthia Bird, elementary curriculum coordinator;

• Gary Bissaillon, KCH Elementary principal;

• Mike Dardaris, Driver Middle School principal;

• Bradford Dates, director of athletics, health and physical education;

• John Durkee, Marcellus Senior High School principal;

• Deborah Glisson, director of secondary instruction;

• Trish McCarron, assistant superintendent for pupil services;

• Janet O’Mara, secondary curriculum coordinator; and

• Craig Tice, superintendent of schools.

In May 2010, the governor added a new section 3012-c to the Education Law, which established a comprehensive evaluation system for classroom teachers and building principals. The new law requires each classroom teacher and building principal to receive an annual review that results in a single composite effectiveness score and a rating of “highly effective,” “effective,” “developing,” or “ineffective.”

The composite score breaks down as follows:

• 20 percent is based on student growth on state assessments or other comparable measures of student growth using Grades 4 through 8 ELA and math assessments. In addition, Marcellus will use Regents exams at the high school in conjunction with regionally developed assessments (with other schools in Central New York) and locally crafted student learning objectives or SLOs.

• 20 percent is based on locally selected measures of student achievement deemed by the state commissioner of education to be rigorous and comparable across classrooms. Although the district considered using graduation rate data for this measure, Marcellus Central School District now plans to use scores (levels of student mastery) on the five Regents exams required for graduation: algebra, English, U.S. history and government, global history and living environment.

• The remaining 60 percent is based on other measures of teacher/principal effectiveness consistent with standards prescribed by the commissioner. For the Marcellus plans, the district will use multiple measures, including observational data (31 of 60 points) and a teacher portfolio (29 of 60 points). For teachers, the 60 percent will be based on New York teaching standards as measured by the NYS United Teachers (NYSUT) rubric.

For principals, Marcellus will use Interstate School Leader Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards, which were originally developed by Vanderbilt University.

As of last week, 107 of the state’s 697 school districts had received NYSED approval of their APPR plans.