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State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. today released the preliminary statewide composite ratings for teachers and principals. The ratings do not include New York City educators; while the rest of the state's districts are in their second year of evaluations, New York City is in the first year of its plan and there are no composite ratings available yet for city teachers.

"The purpose of the evaluation system is not to create a 'gotcha' environment," Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch said. "The goal is to improve teaching and learning by targeting professional development to make sure every student receives quality instruction. We want to highlight and reward excellence, ensure those who are struggling receive the support they need, and provide continuous feedback to all educators."

"These are preliminary numbers; we still have a significant amount of analysis to do," King said. "But we wanted to provide a sense of the landscape. The results are striking. The more accurate student proficiency rates on the new Common Core assessments did not negatively affect teacher ratings. It's clear that teachers are rising to the challenge of teaching the Common Core. It's also clear that it's time to put aside talk about a moratorium on the use of state assessments in educator evaluations and focus on ensuring all students receive the rigorous and engaging instruction that will help them to prepare for college and careers."

The evaluations are required under the revised teacher and principal evaluation law (Education Law §3012-c) signed into law in 2012. The Board of Regents adopted regulations to implement the law.

The preliminary statewide composite results, based on data submitted by school districts and BOCES as of the October 18 deadline, found that 91.5 percent of teachers are rated Highly Effective (49.7 percent) or Effective (41.8 percent); 4.4 percent are rated Developing; and 1 percent are rated Ineffective. The data show 86.9 percent of principals are rated Highly Effective (26 percent) or Effective (60.9 percent); 7.5 percent are Developing; and 2.1 percent are rated Ineffective. (Totals are less than 100 percent due to a small percentage of unreported scores.)

Under the evaluation law, 60 percent of educators' ratings are based on observations and other measures agreed upon at the local level through collective bargaining. Twenty percent of the rating is based on student performance on grades 4-8 state assessments (where applicable) or locally determined student learning objectives, and the final 20 percent is based upon locally bargained, locally determined objective measures.

King noted that more that 80 percent of the teachers were rated exclusively under criteria determined by local districts and/or negotiated by local districts and local educator bargaining units. Approximately 18 percent of teachers (grade 4-8 English Language Arts and Math teachers) had students' performance on state assessments used as one fifth of their evaluations; the balance of the measures used in their evaluations were negotiated by local districts and local educator bargaining units.

School districts were required to submit the evaluation data to the State Education Department (SED) by last Friday, October 18. King said SED will release more detailed evaluation data later this year.

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