APPR: What you need to know

he new APPR law is being greeted with enthusiasm by school administrators, parents, and educators alike, who say critics do not understand how much was wrong with the Annual Professional Performance Review system to begin with.

“What people don’t grasp about the APPR system is that it wasn’t working,” said Bob Lowry, deputy director for the New York State Council of School Superintendents. In fact, a 2023 NYSCOSS survey showed that more than 40 percent of superintendents said that APPR was having a negative impact on improving teaching.

Administrators also said the old APPR system came with a lot of cumbersome provisions and paperwork that took time and manpower to execute. The new law will refocus the evaluation process on professional development, where it belongs.

“Professional evaluations are supposed to be a form of feedback. They are not supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ system, and unfortunately, that’s what APPR was,” said Tony Cardamone, president of the School Administrators Association of New York State. “This new system … will be something that is being done ‘with people’ and not ‘to people.’”

NYSUT released a fact sheet detailing how the new law empowers educators and districts. Here are a few highlights:

1. The law eliminates the connection between APPR scores and the granting of tenure. School districts may now grant tenure irrespective of the APPR scores awarded to a probationary teacher.
2. The law returns the APPR system to local control. Plans must be bargained collectively and the requirement to use student performance as a metric is eliminated. Districts have up to eight years to negotiate and submit their plans to the State Education Department.
3. The previously used HEDI rating bands — Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, Ineffective — are replaced with a number system 1–4, with four being the highest.
4. Adding flexibility and respect for teachers’ experience, the law allows districts to set different observation/evaluation requirements for probationary and tenured teachers.

“Teachers and students alike are so much more than the glimpse a high-stakes test supposedly captures,” said Troy Teachers Association President Beth Willson. “We can continue to develop engaging lessons, meet our students’ needs, and keep the rigor, but eliminate the pressure for students to score some arbitrary number.”

For more details on the new law, including a side-by-side comparison with the old law, visit nysut.org/appr.