For those of you not familiar, the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) was devised by the New York Board of Education to ensure that teachers are being held accountable for the work that they do. The spirit of this program to improve education is truly appreciated.
Only, here’s the thing.
The APPR seems to assume that teachers were not previously being held accountable for the work they do. The APPR was born of a growing movement to vilify teachers for failures of American students to keep pace with their international counterparts. Can anyone question whether there are bad teachers? Of course not. But in our district, and quite possibly yours, a great system already existed to ensure that teachers were accountable. Students have performed at impressive levels in comparison to national standards. And the kinds of fine women and men who come to school and teach our children every day are not villains, but are heroes. Recent tragedies have illustrated just how beautifully teachers have risen to heroic measures in the interest of the children in their care. In return, endowing them with our trust that they are doing their best to educate those children seems the very least we can do.
Penicillin was an amazing discovery. Penicillin has saved countless lives. We would not be where we are today without the discovery of penicillin.
Only, here’s the thing.
When you administer penicillin to a healthy patient, you begin to kill things that are supposed to be alive.
We, the undersigned, are asking the New York Board of Education and our state legislators to reconsider the prescription of APPR in high-performing school districts. In our district alone, the cost of implementing the APPR reaches into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in work hours, with a return of perhaps 1 percent in state compensation. It involves more testing of students in an already saturated curriculum, AND pressures teachers to place even greater emphasis on state test preparation throughout the year. Both of our high schools come out in national top 100 rankings for public institutions every year. If we’re bragging, we’re bragging for our teachers, not our kids. We’re bragging for our administrators, not ourselves.
Above all, we are asking the state to let us endow teachers with our trust that they are doing their best to educate our children. We are asking that districts with a stellar history of performance be exempt from the rigors of APPR, safe in the knowledge that our schools clearly know what they are doing. Let the success of our district and not individual student performance on standardized tests be a measure of our teachers’ effectiveness. We are asking that they save the penicillin for sick patients.
Submitted by Pittsford Central School District parents Micky Sanon, Julie Daugherty, Sarah D. Hurth, L.M.T., Heather Hunter Smith, Amy and Jeffrey Schwartzman, Patricia A. Bleier, Terry Ann Fitch, Lynn Eckl, Sherri C. Lauver, Ann Kabel and Elaine Monroe
For those of you not familiar, the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) was devised by the New York Board of Education to ensure that teachers are being held accountable for the work that they do. The spirit of this program to improve education is truly appreciated.
Only, here’s the thing.
The APPR seems to assume that teachers were not previously being held accountable for the work they do. The APPR was born of a growing movement to vilify teachers for failures of American students to keep pace with their international counterparts. Can anyone question whether there are bad teachers? Of course not. But in our district, and quite possibly yours, a great system already existed to ensure that teachers were accountable. Students have performed at impressive levels in comparison to national standards. And the kinds of fine women and men who come to school and teach our children every day are not villains, but are heroes. Recent tragedies have illustrated just how beautifully teachers have risen to heroic measures in the interest of the children in their care. In return, endowing them with our trust that they are doing their best to educate those children seems the very least we can do.
Penicillin was an amazing discovery. Penicillin has saved countless lives. We would not be where we are today without the discovery of penicillin.
Only, here’s the thing.
When you administer penicillin to a healthy patient, you begin to kill things that are supposed to be alive.
We, the undersigned, are asking the New York Board of Education and our state legislators to reconsider the prescription of APPR in high-performing school districts. In our district alone, the cost of implementing the APPR reaches into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in work hours, with a return of perhaps 1 percent in state compensation. It involves more testing of students in an already saturated curriculum, AND pressures teachers to place even greater emphasis on state test preparation throughout the year. Both of our high schools come out in national top 100 rankings for public institutions every year. If we’re bragging, we’re bragging for our teachers, not our kids. We’re bragging for our administrators, not ourselves.
Above all, we are asking the state to let us endow teachers with our trust that they are doing their best to educate our children. We are asking that districts with a stellar history of performance be exempt from the rigors of APPR, safe in the knowledge that our schools clearly know what they are doing. Let the success of our district and not individual student performance on standardized tests be a measure of our teachers’ effectiveness. We are asking that they save the penicillin for sick patients.
Submitted by Pittsford Central School District parents Micky Sanon, Julie Daugherty, Sarah D. Hurth, L.M.T., Heather Hunter Smith, Amy and Jeffrey Schwartzman, Patricia A. Bleier, Terry Ann Fitch, Lynn Eckl, Sherri C. Lauver, Ann Kabel and Elaine Monroe
