State Education Commissioner John King announced today that he has reinstated school improvement grant funding to five districts -- Albany, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Schenectady and Syracuse.
Buffalo was conspicuously absent from the list.
Asked about the district's status, an SED spokesman pointed to a statement from King indicating that "the five districts whose SIG funding is still suspended [including Buffalo] have requested hearings to challenge his ruling."
Buffalo's $9.3 million in SIG funds for six low-performing schools was suspended after the district failed to submit principal and teacher evaluation plans for those schools, for 2011-12, that the state deemed acceptable. Nine other districts also saw their SIG funding suspended.
Buffalo has since submitted at least three revised plans, according to teachers union president Phil Rumore.
"Teacher and principal evaluations are a major ingredient of the Regents reform agenda," Commissioner King said. "The evaluation agreements submitted by these five districts are clear evidence that school districts and local unions can come together to craft a meaningful evaluation system. The end result is better teaching and improved learning, both of which translate into better opportunities for the students in SIG schools.
"This proves that districts and teachers can get it done. After SIG funding was suspended in January, these five districts went back to the drawing board and worked out agreements that meet the state and federal requirements. All five districts can now receive their 2011-12 SIG funding. Students at these schools have been denied a good education for far too long. Meaningful teacher evaluations and the improvements funded with SIG money should help start to turn that around."
CNN's Gary Tuchman talks to plastic surgeon Kulwant Bhangoo, who gets the lion's share of business from Buffalo teachers; School Board President Lou Petrucci; Buffalo Teachers Federation President Phil Rumore; teacher Valerie Akauola, who had surgery after losing 150 pounds; and second-grade teacher Linda Tokarz, who says she gets regular treatments of some sort.
The piece on Anderson Cooper's show, "Teachers nip, tuck for free," recaps what we already know: Buffalo teachers have the cosmetic surgery rider; teachers pay nothing for procedures; taxpayers pick up the full tab; last year, it cost about $5.9 million; the district wants the union to waive the benefit as a gesture of goodwill; the union is willing to get rid of the rider, but only through contract negotiations; the contract expired nearly eight years ago.
While this is news to national viewers, it's rather familiar to those of us in Buffalo.
But what might be most noteworthy to us locally is the fact that, after significant local media attention on this issue a year and a half ago, pretty much nothing has changed.
Teachers still have the benefit. The union is still willing to get rid of it, in negotiations. And the union and the district still seem nowhere close to hammering out a new contract.
In the midst of all the attention being paid to the new state agreement on teacher evaluations, something else is getting entirely overshadowed: principal evaluations.
Just as Race to the Top requires schools to tie teacher evaluations to student performance, it also requires schools to tie principal evaluations to student performance.
In Buffalo, at least, the changes to principal evaluations are probably more drastic than the changes to teacher evaluations.
The city's existing teacher evaluations, which are based entirely on classroom observations, result in an overall finding that the teacher is either "adequate" or "inadequate" for the position.
Principals are rated on a scale of 1 to 4 on more than 20 items in three categories: leadership, management, and school/community/business relations. But the principal evaluations result in no overall finding at all -- something that chief academic officer Fran Wilson concedes renders them of limited use.
At any rate, principal evaluations will be getting overhauled in schools across the state.
In today's paper, we offer an overview Q&A on the teacher evaluations. Here is an overview of the principal evaluations, to accompany that.
Will principals be evaluated on a 100-point system, too?
Yes. The principal evaluation system parallels the teacher evaluation system in that 60 of the 100 points are based on site visits, and the other 40 points are tied to measurable student outcomes.
What are the overall ratings for principals?
They are the same as the ratings for teachers. Each principal will receive a numeric score on a 100-point scale, along with a corresponding categorical rating: highly effective, for scores of 91 to 100; effective, 75 to 90; developing, 65 to 74; and ineffective, below 65.
What is the breakdown of the 100 points?
Similar to the teacher evaluations, 60 points will be based on site visits.
The other 40 points will be dependent upon student performance. For principals in schools where there is no state-approved principal value-added model, 20 points would be based on state measures, and 20 points would be based on local measures. (This would apply to schools serving students in primary grades -- students in third grade or younger -- for example.)
For principals in most schools, 25 points will be based on state-determined measures, and 15 points on locally determined measures.
How will those 60 points be determined for each principal?
The majority of those 60 points "shall be based on a broad assessment of the principal's leadership and management actions." That will be based on a rubric by the principal's supervisor, a trained administrator or an independent evaluator.
This must include more than one site visit, including at least one that is unannounced.
The remainder of the 60 points is to be based on at least two of the following: "feedback from teachers, students, and/or families using state-approved instruments; school visits by other trained evaluators; and/or review of school documents, records, and/or state accountability processes."
What are the options for the locally-determined measure of student achievement or growth?
Districts may choose from several options, including: student achievement on fourth- to eighth-grade ELA and math, such as the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency; student growth or achievement on those state tests for students with disabilities or English language learners; student performance on locally selected measures approved for use in teacher evaluations.
Also, for principals in high schools: four-, five- and/or six-year graduation rates; percentage of students getting a Regents diploma with advanced designation and/or honors; percentage of a cohort of a students getting a specified scored on approved alternative exams, such as AP, IB or SAT II; and student progress toward graduation using "strong predictive indicators" such as credits accumulated by students in ninth or tenth grade.
What about the state measures of student growth?
The state has not yet released the means by which it will measure student growth for principals.
When must principals be provided with the results of their evalutions?
Principals must be given the results of their evaluation no later than Sept. 1 of the next school year. Teachers must also receive their evaluation results by that date.
When must schools have the new principal evaluations in place?
The state agreement calls for schools to have principal evaluations in place in 2012-13, the same as the teacher evaluations.
What are the consequences for schools that do not comply?
Districts that do not have principal and teacher evaluations -- that comply with the state agreement -- in place by mid-January 2013 risk losing their 2012-13 increase in state aid.
District officials are still waiting to hear back from State Ed on the improvement plans submitted at the end of December for seven low-performing schools.
Associate Superintendent Debra Sykes says she expects a decision sometime in early or mid-March on the plans for Futures Academy, Buffalo Elementary School of Technology, Waterfront Elementary, Bilingual Center School 33, Drew Science Magnet, East High School, Lafayette High School.
And the district is waiting to hear how many of the four possible new PLA schools do end up getting that designation: Pantoja, Lovejoy Discovery School 43, Herman Badillo Bilingual Academy and Grabiarz.
Sykes says she has started meeting with parents and staff at each of those schools to find out which of the four federal improvement models they want to implement.
She seems to be anticipating less drama over the decisions this year. Why? Because the way the federal government's rules work, if all four of those schools do get designated as persistently lowest achieving, then two of them could use the transformation model. That's generally considered the model that requires the least amount of change -- the staff stays in place, and if the principal has only been there a year or two, the principal can stay in place, too.
Grabiarz, Sykes said, might already meet the requirements for a turnaround model -- replacing half the staff -- because that school merged students and staff from Grabiarz and from Campus West, which closed in June 2011.
So if two of the four schools use the transformation model, and Grabiarz uses turnaround, then only one other school would have to use either turnaround or hire an outside group to run it, Sykes told the District Parent Coordinating Council this week.
All of Buffalo's first six PLA schools are already using the transformation model: MLK, International School 45, and South Park, Bennett, Riverside and Burgard high schools.
Sykes says it's too soon to see any results in terms of improved test scores from the transformation efforts in those schools.
"Last year, the [school improvement grant] monies didn't come until November, then we didn't get the people in place until December or January, and then the tests were in May," she said.
Which prompted Sam Radford to ask: "So we won't know whether the transformation model works until after we have to make another decision on whether to use transformation again?"
Last night, the District Parent Coordinating Council elected Sam Radford as its president.
For the past two years, Radford has pretty much been the public face of the DPCC, but technically, he was the vice president.
Until last night, Co-Leen Webb had been president -- although one who rarely spoke much at public events. I've been at more than one School Board meeting, in fact, where Radford spoke as the DPCC rep and a board member or two actually asked where the president was and why she wasn't addressing the board instead.
Webb apparently is attending college now and doesn't have the time to serve as president. Radford ran unopposed for the top job. (I'm frequently asked how much he gets paid by the DPCC. He, along with all the other members and officers of the group, are volunteers.)
His term will be for two years, as are all the officers' terms.
I'm also asked fairly often exactly who the DPCC is, or who it is that Radford represents. Each school has a representative on the DPCC, which is basically the parent group that's officially recognized by the district. To elect officers, each school gets one vote. Forty of Buffalo's 59 schools were represented at the DPCC meeting on Tuesday. Thirty-two of them were eligible voters (meaning they were the official DPCC rep for their school).
The only contested position was that of vice president. Jessica Bauer Walker and Bryon McIntyre both wanted that seat.
In his remarks to the DPCC prior to the voting, McIntyre cited his years of advocacy work for children. He also said he didn't realize Walker was running for v.p. when he decided to run, and assured parents they couldn't go wrong with either choice.
"Jessica is a brilliant mind. No matter how it goes down today, the DPCC is going to grow," he said.
Walker, who is relatively new on the education scene in Buffalo, has been making her mark by pushing for asset mapping, a way of tapping into skills and strengths of parents in every classroom.
In the end, they both won.
Radford asked the DPCC to add a second vice president's seat for Walker, which the group agreed to do.
Other uncontested races included incumbents: Patricia Elliott for treasurer; Kim Walek for corresponding secretary; and Sabirah Muhammed for recording secretary.
Please join me at 5:30 p.m. today for a live blog of today's School Board meeting.
Items on the agenda include a resolution from board President Lou Petrucci to add a nonvoting student representative to the School Board immediately and another to enter into a relationship with Say Yes to Education -- based on terms that have not yet been finalized.
Join me at 6 p.m. today for a live blog of the District Parent Coordinating Council meeting.
There's quite a bit on the agenda tonight.
For one thing, the group is holding its elections. Nominations can be taken from the floor, but at this point, Sam Radford is running for president uncontested. The only contested race, in fact, is for vice president: Jessica Bauer Walker and Bryon McIntyre are vying for the position. Only those parent reps in attendance at tonight's meeting can vote on the officers, I'm told.
Also, a representative from the governor's office will present an overview of the governor's education reform agenda -- a key piece of which links school aid increases in 2012-13 to implementation of the new teacher evaluation system in every district.
The state education commissioner and the governor have both put teacher evaluations front and center in their plans for reforming education in New York. Many millions of dollars for the Buffalo Public Schools ride on the district's ability to put together an evaluation system the state will approve.
There are plenty of important elements on both sides of the debate on teacher evaluations, and I hope to be able to touch on as many of them as possible in the coming days.
Today, I want to start off by addressing some of the anger that some teachers have expressed regarding the Buffalo News requesting public information about teacher evaluations.
What prompted the News to request the information?
Well, a few months ago, a teacher at one of the low-performing high schools contacted me with some concerns about the teacher evaluations in 2010-11. The teachers at the PLA schools, he had heard, were getting shafted on their evaluations. He wanted to know: was that true?
I had no idea.
But it seemed like a fair question to investigate.
So I did what seemed to make sense and asked the district for copies of all the teacher evaluations. If there were some inequity in how teachers were getting evaluated, that would be the way to prove or disprove it.
(I checked with Bob Freeman over at the state's Committee on Open Government, and he said there's no doubt that a teacher's overall rating is a matter of public record. But more on that another day.)
What did I find out from the district?
In most schools, all teachers were deemed "adequate." (On the existing evaluations, there are only two final determinations: "adequate" or "not adequate.") It's the principals, remember, who are doing the evaluations, which, in 2010-11, were based solely on classroom observations.
The school with the highest percentage of teachers rated inadequate was Hamlin Park, where one out of 10 teachers were rated inadequate. At Drew Science Magnet, 8 percent of teachers were rated inadequate. Early Childhood Center 17 and MLK each had 7 percent of teachers rated inadequate.
Most of the PLA (persistently lowest achieving) schools had a rather low percentage of teachers rated inadequate -- if any teachers at all were.
At the PLA high schools, for instance: Bennett and Burgard had 3 percent rated inadequate; Lafayette, East and South Park had none.
I'll be delving into this issue more in the coming days.
In the meantime, here's the raw info for you to digest a bit (ratings are from 2010-11):
When the School Board voted to hire Say Yes to Education and Cascade Consulting to help find the next superintendent, what, exactly, did the board agree to?
(Keep in mind that this is the proposal they submitted. The board has not yet signed a contract. It's possible some of the terms could change before the board signs off on the final deal.)
Here are some of the highlights from the Say Yes/Cascade proposal:
- Cost to district: $30,000.
- Additional costs, including travel, advertising and mailing costs, estimated at $45,500. To be funded by Say Yes.
- Timeline: approximately 90 days from beginning of search to selection of superintendent.
- "The key to the success of our approach is based on acquiring a thorough understanding of the district, its culture, the community, the decision-making process of the organization and, most important, what the board and the community want the superintendent to accomplish." The consultant recommends holding a series of "extensive focus group discussions with key people and groups identified by the board," at minimum to include "discussions with each board member, appropriate central office staff, all principals, as many teachers as feasible, students, parents, business people, faith based leaders, and representatives of community groups."
- In addition, the consultants have offered to conduct online, telephone and hard-copy surveys to supplement the focus groups to give more people an opportunity to provide input.
- "We will not rely on passive recruitment... Depending on the skills needed by the district at this time, we may place additional [ads] in professional publications outside education, or in other places not typically used in educational searches. We make a special effort and have had considerable success in recruiting a diverse pool of candidates who fairly represent the diversity of the district and the community served."
- "Cascade Consulting Group utilizes a unique, tested, and independent assessment tool that will provide the board with objective information about the final candidates. The DISC Behavioral Assessment was developed nearly 30 years ago and has been continually updated and validated over the years. Widely used in the private sector, it provides critical information on how individuals will behave on the job (particularly under stress), what motivates them, their values, the kind of work environment they prefer, and how best to communicate and work with them. This critical information will allow the board to make an informed decision about, and then work effectively with, the selected candidate."
- "Through broad-based outreach and engagement strategies, Cascade makes a special effort to ensure that its search process provides equal opportunities for women and minorities."
- After the application deadline, Cascade/Say Yes will review applications to screen for minimum qualifications. "A second review of applications will include telephone and in-person discussions with viable applicants, a careful review of academic and professional credentials, and a review of background information provided by the candidate. Based on this information, we will meet with the school board in executive session and recommend a list of candidates for additional consideration.
"During this meeting with the board, we will seek authorization to travel to candidates' work or home locations for comprehensive interviews lasting one to three hours. We believe this is an essential aspect of the search process... Personal, in-depth interviews with the candidates provide the opportunity to explore other important considerations, such as personal presentation and oral communication styles, and more substantive areas, such as intelligence, integrity, motivation, and character."
- Once "a sufficient applicant pool" is established, "if desired by the Board of Education, Say Yes will facilitate the establishment of a superintendent selection advisory group composed of exceptional individuals from diverse sectors of the community. Final selection of committee members will be the responsibility of the board of education."
- "Committee members will review all applications and, in cooperation with us, will select up to 12 candidates from the pool as semifinalists. Next, we will conduct preliminary interviews with these candidates in their home locations to make certain they meet the established criteria. The results of these interviews will be shared with the committee, and based on this information the committee will recommend (two to four) final candidates to the board of education to interview."
- Cascade guarantees that "in the unlikely event that a selected candidate resigns or is terminated for cause within one year from date of hire, it will conduct a replacement search at no charge, other than direct expenses related to the search."
- "Say Yes to Education and Cascade know that leadership counts, but not any leadership. It must be based on the unique needs and characteristics of the district. The focus of this work is matching the skills, talents, and backgrounds of candidates to the districts. As a result, the candidates it helps to place in districts tend to have a longer tenure than others.
"In addition to work with school districts, Cascade has been selected by various educational foundations to collaborate on the important work of supporting reform efforts throughout the country. During the last several years, Cascade has worked with (1) the Stupski Foundation to identify people who could work with school districts across the country to improve student performance; (2) the Broad Foundation to train aspiring traditional and nontraditional candidates to serve as effective urban superintendents; and (3) the Galef Foundation in Los Angeles."
