Agreement on APPR

ECB and SED Issue Joint Statement

As many of you will recall, movement to revise the current APPR system began in earnest last spring. Negotiations came very close to producing legislation that would increase district flexibility and delink student state assessment scores from professional evaluations. Those efforts did not come to fruition when the legislative session concluded, however, discussions between key stakeholders continued throughout the summer and fall.

The revision process is well underway and on March 20, the NYS Educational Conference Board, of which SAANYS is a member, issued the following press statement, announcing an agreement in position by members of the ECB and New York State Education Department. That full statement is available here.

We anticipate the introduction of legislation that would include the following key elements:

• Delinking student state assessment results from professional evaluations.
• Increase district flexibility for designing the evaluation process.
• Evaluations would consist of multiple measures, including a required observation of teachers and principals.
• The evaluation must be based on the NYS teaching and professional standards, but do not need to be included in each evaluation.
• Probationary educators must be evaluated on the standards annually, however, subsets of standards may be used for tenured educators.
• Educators will be assigned a rating between levels 1-4.
• Educators receiving ratings of levels 1 or 2 are required to have a professional development plan.

School districts would be required to implement the new evaluation process by the 2032-2033 school year, thereby providing an eight-year transition period.

We will keep you apprised of further developments to the revisions of APPR and welcome any questions or concerns that you may want us to know about. Please contact Cindy Gallagher at cgallagher@saanys.org.