PT Council Critical of State-Mandated Teacher Evaluation System

Opposition to state-mandated standardized testing is nothing new in Scarsdale. Ten years ago, middle-school students and parents were boycotting New York State Regents exams. And just last year, SMS students boycotted another state-mandated exam, that one a "field test" for educational publisher Pearson's test questions. What is groundbreaking in Albany's most recent mandates is that they do not only evaluate students based on these scores, but teachers as well, based on the performance of their students.

These scores, along with required classroom observation by principals as well other factors, are used to rank teachers relative to one another based on a 100-point scale. The teachers are then ranked as "highly effective," "effective," "developing" or "ineffective." The ratings influence teacher's eligibility for salary increases as well as disciplinary implications for an "ineffective" rating.

The Scarsdale Parent Teacher Council recently issued a statement expressing that they "do not support the NY State's mandated system", citing five central reasons for their position.

The council states that the high cost of additional testing, "estimated at one million annually and expected to increase," will fall on tax payers and that it "further constrains the district school budget under New York's property tax levy..."

They cite a 2012 study of lower Hudson schools in their first year of Race to the Top, stating "Evidently, no cost-benefit analysis, including an analysis of districts' ability to afford the new unfunded mandates, was conducted at the state level prior to the decision to enact the new teacher evaluation law and regulations." Race to the Top or RTTP is a 4.35 Billion dollar contest started by the U.S. department of Education. New York was one of the biggest winners under this program, gaining a $700 Million grant in the second phase.

Scarsdale PT Council also stated that the mandated system "overemphasizes standardized test results," "ignores complex classroom realities," "and relies too heavily on an attempt to statistically link student test results to individual teacher effects that is neither fully researched nor validated."

Tom Sobol, who has both sat at the helm of Scarsdale Schools as superintendent, and in Albany as the state Commissioner of the Department of Education, expressed his support of the PT Council's statement, "What a good job PT Council has done. Its statement exposes the folly of using standardized testing to evaluate teachers".

The new teacher evaluation system has direct bearing on the role and workload of the principals as well as the teachers, as according to the new regulation they are required to observe each teacher at least twice in the school year. Current Scarsdale Superintendent, Dr. Michael McGill, described this as "while desirable in theory, not the best use of resources". He says that it pulls principals away from high-need areas like supporting new teachers, resolving conflicts, or speaking with struggling students in order to look after teachers who are performing well.

"The state plan does recognize the importance of examining varied areas of performance" says Dr. McGill. "On the other hand, there is no legitimate way to rank teachers relative to one another, 1 to 100, saying this person is worth an 85.5 and that one is an 85.9. Also, we believe that great teaching is at least as much an art as a science and that human judgment is essential to evaluating it. It can't be reduced to a simple, linear numerical rating," or as was stated in the Scarsdale Board of Education's statement on education last September, "Statistics should inform human judgment rather than prevail over it."

While there appears to be consensus between the PT Council, school board, and school district leadership on this issue, neither teachers nor principals are currently planning this new system as the SMS students did last year.

Superintendent McGill says, "We'll do what we're required to do by law and regulation, which is to make the results of the process a significant part of judgments about teacher performance, but not the only ones." Meanwhile, the PT Council, Board of Education, and other bodies interested in Scarsdale's students will continue working to make their voices heard in Albany and in D.C.

This article was written by Alec Lichtenberg