Throughout history, there are numerous examples of smart people who have made poor decisions. At the time, they may have thought that the decision seemed logical, appropriate and promised that positive changes would result. We have all read stories of well-respected people who have made incredibly ill-conceived statements, policies, and proclamations that in hindsight were misguided, short-sighted and downright wrong.  Here's a grievous example of one of those misguided decisions.

The new APPR plan that is being initiated across many states is one such policy.  The policy, of course, in all its incarnations is believed to be filled with good intentions. If they took a harder less expedient look, they would find that the idea is incredibly misguided on so many different levels, so much so that it is hard to understand how it could become the law [remember those "smart" people I mentioned above]. 

Here's how this plan works in New York State…

Teachers and principals’ will be “scored” on a scale of 0-100 in three different categories.   Let's consider for a moment that you must give a score to the person who prepared dinner last night in your home. Can you imagine giving a score from 0-100 on the dinner you had last night and defend the difference between a 78 and an 80-with possible penalties attached?

• In the APPR plan, the first 20 points of an educator's score will be based on how students' perform on the ELA and math assessments, which the best testing experts in the field say is an inappropriate use of the assessments. That's, of course, forgetting that the majority of teachers in a building don’t teach ELA and math and that they have developed no   practical way to determine how the “20 points” on the ELA and math assessments will be figured out for their score [e.g., those teachers who teach PE, Art, Music, and other essential courses].
• The second 20 points will be based on a “local assessment”, for which the state has given “clear-as-mud” directions on how they are to be created and judged.
• Finally, 60 points will be based on “multiple observations” of teachers. Never mind that the rubrics districts use to judge teachers were never intended to be converted to a “point system,” they were designed to improve instruction.

        Sounds like a plan to you?  Sounds like a house of cards to me and other likeminded educators. 

So, allow me to diverge for a moment and talk about baseball cards, teachers and the APPR system. I can imagine it now… Teachers line up like baseball Little Leaguers and each will receive a card which has their “score” on the back of it and a picture of themselves, at bat in the front. The back of the baseball card will have their scores and “statistics” divided into categories including additional information about them like the number of sick days they have taken, the number of questions they ask per period, how many parents they have contacted during the year. It could also include how often they remained after school to watch games or provide extra "batting practice", or how many discipline referrals they have written. A cottage industry will result as an outgrowth of the trading cards.  I imagine students trading their cards and listening in on their conversations.  They can be overheard saying things like; “I will trade you a Mrs. Jones for a Mr. Smith! Mrs. Jones' students get higher grades in her classes!  Mr. Smith is too hard! ” Add the parents to this trading card scenario nightmare, and you have a recipe for chaos.

Let me raise just one other baseball analogy to drive home the point. Sometimes, it does not matter that you do all the “right things.” As a Yankee fan, every time Mariano Rivera comes in to close a game, I expect he is going to come through! We root mightily for him, but, unfortunately, that is not always the case. It is the same with teachers. We expect teachers to use the best research-based strategies to teach and assess students, to be effective, reflective practitioners, but that will not always equate to improved student achievement.  The best laid plans often go awry.  Does the teacher lose points each time a lesson fails? Does it destroy his/her credibility?  Let's think of all these schools that are now under review because a small segment of the population failed to reach a cut score. As crazy at it may seem, in NYS it is predicted that in three years 70% of all schools will be under review. Really?????

APPR instead of working toward improving the quality of education will have created a “gotcha” mentality, when it is fully implemented, that will ultimately create a negative “culture” for students, teachers and parents.  The “do it or we will hurt you” mantra that state education departments are using is both demoralizing to teachers, principals and parents and divide the union that teachers, parents and administrators have worked hard to create.  We all desire change where it is necessary, but this is not a great way to effect the change that is needed!  It ignores all of the intangibles by boiling everything down to a number.

I will not argue that we have a perfect system, and I will say that as educators that we should be held accountable for students' results, but at what price and in what format?  Let’s listen to the experts and field test ideas that make sense and are actually “doable and helpful. “When hard-working teachers and principals are reduced to a number and a score, we have surely lost our way.

 I suspect that some of the public will perceive me and other administrators as whiners, but the problem that we are confronted with at the moment is that, for a while, the politicians, the "smart people", the non-educators will hold sway over a system that they think will “fix us.”  Do we have to sit idly by until the system collapses under the weight of its own ill-conceived construct?  Will we all be held captive by the misguided decisions that these “smart people” have made!

Let’s hope at some point before it becomes too late, smart and sensible people will create a system that actually works.

Andy Greene