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ARMONK, N.Y. - The Byram Hills School District is responding to the new state teacher performance evaluation law by creating its own assessment mandates for all subject areas.
Education Law 3012, which covers teacher and principal evaluations, "requires a new approach to how teachers are evaluated and will include use of student assessment data," said Tim Kaltenecker, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
Kaltenecker said school districts have the choice of developing their own assessment data or purchasing it from vendors. We dont want to purchase standardized tests, we want to develop tests that make sense to us for the types of learning we value and the higher thinking level of our students, he said.
Weve been aligning our curriculum to the new standards and its an enormous amount of work. Teachers have been working around the clock on this, he said.
The new law requires performance reviews to be conducted this year if teachers are still under contract. "Were in the final year of our current contract so the regulations will be in force this year, Kaltenecker said.
If schools fail to complete their evaluations in time, state aid could be lost. In our budget we get $3 million a year and every dollar counts, Kaltenecker said. Were trying to keep costs down for the community and its costing a lot to design the assessments and develop the system.
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