SILVER CREEK - The Silver Creek board of Education recently held a workshop on the new teacher evaluation system.
Superintendent Daniel Ljiljanich explained the evaluation is based on a 100 point scale - 60 points from observations, 20 points from the group growth measurement and 20 points from locally selected student measures.
He said the school will continue to use the Danielson Model for observations as well as investing in new software called Teachscape provided through BOCES. He said one of the benefits of the software is it emphasizes teacher's reflection on their observation scores.
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OBSERVER Photo by Nicole Gugino
Silver Creek Superintendent Daniel Ljiljanich explains the new teacher evaluation system to the board of education at a recent meeting.
The school has agreed to have tenured teachers observed with one announced visit per year and untenured teachers with two unannounced visits per year.
The group growth measure has three categories for teachers; those measured with state assessments in grades 4-8, those measured with state post-assessments (regents) and everyone else.
Ljiljanich explained teachers without pre- and post-assessments from the state will be given a growth measure based upon the average of assessments in their grade level.
He explained how School Learning Objectives (SLOs) play into this by focusing on another subject, for example art and history.
"Everyone else in our district, it was decided administratively, we were going to use a group growth measure by each building. In other words, we are in this together more so now than ever. Our elementary school, our middle school and our high school, what is going to happen at each of those levels, all of the state assessments are going to be combined and students do on those assessments will determine all the teachers' (in this category) group growth measure," Ljiljanich explained. "The first thing that would come out of most people's mouths when they hear this is 'wait, so I don't teach a regents exam, so I'm going to be graded on all regents exams at my level?' and the answer is yes. Our reasoning is our school have districts have been measured forever by how our students do on state exams, so all the teachers who don't have state assessments, their learning objectives they set for the year will be set around helping other teachers who have state assessments. Say I am an art teacher in the high school, one of those SLOs has to focus on a regents exam in the high school, what about history - art history, makes sense."
He explained the final part, which was locally negotiated, also has three categories for teachers: state assessments scores, regents scores and a district-created assessment scores.
The achievement scores, which are also negotiated, will be based on the points and will be in a "HEDI" format, meaning highly effective, effective, developing and ineffective.
"I was really impressed with the way our teachers handled this ... Our teachers responded really well. I thought some people would be pretty unhappy especially with the 20 percent combined growth score being measured by how your colleagues did, but I did not hear any negative feed back," Ljiljanich added.
He said the school's Annual Professional Performance Review evaluation system has yet to be approved by the state.
The next board of education meeting is Wednesday at 7 p.m. following a reception to welcome Ljiljanich to the district at 6 p.m.
