ALBANY—New York’s education leaders say they would support amending the state-mandated teacher evaluation system in order to address anomalies and inconsistencies that have emerged during the first two years of its implementation.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has said he intends to strengthen the rating system, which he has touted as a signature accomplishment of his first term. Accordingly, education leaders say they expect the governor and lawmakers to make changes during the upcoming legislative session.

So far, there are not concrete proposals for amendments—from Cuomo, lawmakers or the Board of Regents, a policy-making panel with regulatory authority—but leaders offered suggestions for areas they think could be improved.

For example, lawmakers, state policy makers and teachers' union leaders plan to examine why some districts had disproportionate numbers of teachers in the lowest or highest rating categories. While some of the changes leaders are looking for could be accomplished through legislation, others might require the Board of Regents to direct districts to negotiate changes locally. Each district has a unique, state-approved plan, and many already made substantial changes after the first year of evaluations.

“I believe that the teacher evaluation system is just starting,” Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch said. “We always said that this is version 1.0, and there will be other versions along the way.”

In August, the state education department released detailed, district-level data from 2012-13, the first year that nearly every school district began implementing teacher evaluations. Most teachers received high ratings, although teachers in poor districts were more likely to get low ratings, Capital has reported.

Education commissioner John King said preliminary statewide results for last school year, which is the first year New York City began rating teachers under the new system, will be available “later this fall.” That data could help inform decisions.

Teachers are rated as "ineffective," "developing," "effective" or "highly effective." Two consecutive "ineffective" ratings could be grounds for termination.

The evaluations are split into three components, with 60 percent based on classroom observations, 20 percent on student performance on local tests and 20 percent on state tests or other measures.

In September, Cuomo told the Buffalo News the system needs “refinement.”

“I’m excited that we started,” he told the newspaper. “And I think once we start to study it and learn it and refine it—because there’s no doubt it needs refinement, not everybody can get an ‘A,’ it can’t be—I think it’s going to be a very valuable tool.”

He suggested that changes might need to be made on the local level in some districts where most teachers were rated “highly effective.”

“The way [districts] negotiated it may be too loose because everyone’s doing well, and I think that’s a valid question,” he told the Buffalo newspaper.

Later, right before his re-election, Cuomo told the Daily News editorial board that he wants to “make it a more rigorous evaluation system.” The paper reported he said he wanted to tie incentives and sanctions to the ratings.

In the book he released in late October outlining his second-term priorities, Cuomo wrote: “New York now has the opportunity to … [continue] to strengthen teacher and principal evaluations.”

A spokesman for Cuomo did not return a request for more details on the governor’s plan to amend the evaluation system.

Like Cuomo, King is concerned too many teachers and principals were rated “highly effective,” particularly on the component of the evaluations based on observations. He said he’d like to see “a higher level of differentiation” in that area.

A study by superintendents in New York City’s northern suburbs found that administrators sometimes give teachers and principals high scores on observations to offset lower ratings based on state test scores. However, administrators’ generosity on the observation ratings varies; in Scarsdale for example, no teachers were rated “highly effective” based on their observations.

“What you want to be able to do is have ‘highly effective’ be meaningful and identify folks that really are excelling so they can be models for their colleagues,” King said. “At the same time, you also want to effectively identify those that are struggling so you can get them support. So that’s one area to look at.”

Alternatively, State Senator John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican who chairs that chamber’s education committee, said he’d like to explore why some districts had so many teachers who were rated “ineffective.” For example, 46 percent of teachers and principals at Beacon schools in Dutchess County were rated “ineffective.”

“There were districts where you seem to have a disproportionate number of teachers who were in the ‘ineffective’ category, sort of like outliers,” Flanagan said. “So I think that became the focal point of the discussions. … What kind of plan did they advance to [the State Education Department], and how did it get approved?”

King also said he’d like to see educators’ overall ratings be more consistent with student performance on standardized tests. The evaluation system does not rate teachers based on students’ absolute performance—only about a third of students in grades three through eight passed Common Core-aligned state exams in each of the last two years—but rather on how much students improve from year to year.

“You’d worry if a district has very poor student growth, or their students are losing ground, but their evaluation ratings are very high,” King said.

New York State United Teachers, a statewide union included in the negotiations for the evaluation system, convened a task force that plans to finalize recommendations for changes early next year. But the union is studying anomalies like the situation of a Long Island teacher who was rated “ineffective” last year on the portion of her evaluation based on student performance on state exams, even though her students have consistently outperformed their peers.

The union is also looking at how educators who teach subjects that are not tested by the state, like art or physical education, are evaluated. NYSUT president Karen Magee told Capital in July that portfolio assessments might work better for evaluating those teachers.

The union might also seek changes in evaluations for teachers of students with disabilities or English language learners.

“The task force is looking at ways to ensure that teacher development and professional development become more predominant in evaluations and the task force is also looking at the possibility of reducing the over-reliance on standardized testing,” NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn said. “Another item the task force is looking at is anomalies in ways that teachers of special education students, English language learners and some of the highest achieving students in the state are evaluated.”

Tisch, the Regents chancellor, said she’d like to see evaluations used to inform professional development decisions, particularly for new teachers. When teachers and principals receive the two lowest ratings under the system—“ineffective” and “developing”—current law requires that they complete personalized professional development plans designed to help them improve.

Tisch lauded a Bloomberg administration change that extended the probationary period before many New York City teachers could be offered tenure, arguing that school districts statewide could benefit from a similar policy shift, and the evaluation system could be used to emphasize professional development during teachers’ first few years in the classroom.

“New York City has had great success elongating … the probationary time, during which a teacher leads up to getting tenure,” Tisch said. “I think as you go through the concept of evaluation, we need to make sure that before we enter into this whole thing about putting a teacher permanently in place, that they be given the tools that they need, the professional development they need, the guidance and the mentoring that they need. I think it has worked very successfully in New York City and I think it has applications around the state.

“I would focus on what happens to a teacher in that professional development pattern before they’re granted tenure,” she continued. “In that arena, you could do so much to help teachers, to help guide them.”

Despite the leaders’ suggestions, Flanagan, the Senate education chair, said it’s difficult to explore further changes to the evaluation system before it’s clear whether Cuomo is going to sign the “safety net” bill he negotiated last session to address teachers’ concerns about the rough rollout of the Common Core standards.

Cuomo issued a “message of necessity” to waive the otherwise mandatory three-day waiting period before lawmakers can vote on bills so the Legislature could pass the measure before session ended in June. Despite the urgency that prompted him to issue the memo, he has not yet signed the bill, his inaction already begun causing problems for school districts.

“The threshold question is: what is the governor going to do about the bill that he advanced with a message of necessity?” Flanagan said. “Anything else beyond that is just conjecture.”