Article critique: Annual Professional Performance Review for Teachers and Principals.
Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) article retrieved from http://www.nysut.org/members/member-guide/appr wrote that there was development and approval of a regulation, governing the APPR of teachers, which required school districts/BOCES to conduct annual evaluations on all teachers but later changes were made to exclude the teaching assistants, teacher aides or pupil personnel title.
The governing body of each school district/BOCES is required to adopt an annual or multi-year plan which will be submitted to the Commissioner of Education for approval and must be put on the district/BOCES website for the public viewing. The completed APPR must be given to the teacher or principal and School districts/BOCES must notify teachers in writing of their rating and score.
The overall message of the article has been brought out in a logical manner making it easy to follow the events and understand for instance the writer clearly stipulates how the amendment of the law and regulations happened chronologically and even states the involves parties (Levine 2010). For example the author writes “In 2000, in collaboration with educators, administrators and other educational partners, the Board of Regents developed and approved the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) of teachers.”
The conclusion and introduction support the article’s main idea as the introduction stipulates what are the requirements of APPR while conclusion gives some recommendations of issues that must be part of the APPR such as Teacher Improvement Plans for developing and ineffective teachers hence supporting the idea that APPR is good and should be adopted (Levine 2010).
The author has also used credible sources of information by referencing to Chapter 103 of the Laws of 2010, adding Section 3012-c of Education Law and Section 100.2(o) of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education, governing the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) of teachers (Levine 2010).
The author is biased in that the article ignores the teachers’ response to the evaluation and only looks at the educators, administrators, educational partners and the Board of Regents contrary evidence.
In the article New York State Principals: New York State’s High Schools, Middle Schools and Elementary Schools: An Open Letter of Concern Regarding New York State’s APPR Legislation for the Evaluation of Teachers and Principals, Feeney C. and Burris C. express concerns about Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) regulations stating that they are seriously flawed in that schools and students will bear the brunt of their poor design.
They strongly oppose the APPR because Educational research and researchers strongly caution against such teacher evaluation approaches; Students will be adversely affected by the regulation and tax dollars will be redirected from Schools to testing Companies, trainers and outside vendors. They therefore recommend that School-wide achievement results should be used as part of every teacher’s and principal’s evaluation; the evaluation system should be Piloted and adjusted before implementing it on a large scale and Evaluation should use broad bands, not numbers, for the evaluation of teachers and principals for it should be about improvement, not sorting and selecting.
The message of this article comes out clearly in a logical manner with each paragraph expounding on the main idea stated at the being of the paragraph (Levine 2010). The introduction of the article clearly stipulates the articles main idea “We are very concerned, however, that at the state level change is being imposed in a rapid manner and without high-quality evidentiary support. Our students, teachers and communities deserve better. They deserve thoughtful reforms that will improve teaching and learning for all students.” The conclusion also concurs with the introduction “We want what is best for our students. We believe, however, that an unproven, expensive and potentially harmful evaluation system is not the path to lasting school improvement. We must not lose sight of what matters the most—the academic, social and emotional growth of our students.”
The article has used sources that are relevant to the articles’ ideas and they are also credible sources making the article have a good and substantial ground of argument. The tone of the article is a heated, overzealous tone which reveals deeper issues in an article’s argument. The article is not biased because it looks at the effects of the review on the students’ teachers and the state at large (Levine 2010).
In conclusion both articles have clearly put forward there arguments in a logical manner hence they are easy to comprehend. I would recommend however that the authors should consider researching about there arguments to increase there credibility (Levine 2010).
Reference
Levine B. (2010).The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide: How to Make Revisions, Self-Edit, and Give and Receive Feedback. Writer’s Digest Books, New York.