The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) has announced that Pennsylvania’s Educator Effectiveness Rating System (PEERS) is now available online for use by LEAs (as of March 2, 2015). This online tool provides local education agencies (LEAs) a free, voluntary, web-based version of the Act 82 Educator Effectiveness final rating tools (PDE 82-1, 82-2, and 82-3), providing users with an efficient and effective process to not only complete the summative rating forms, but to be able to use the data effectively for teacher, principal, and school/district growth and improvement.

LEAs do NOT need to register or sign up to use the system. PEERS is now live, online for any LEA to use at any time as of March 2, 2015. PEERS has been pre-populated with LEA name, school names, staff names,  a final rating form based on the PIMS position code (LEA may edit) and School Performance Profile (SPP) data for all LEAs.

PEERS is hosted within the existing PVAAS web application, allowing PVAAS account holders access to PEERS through the existing PVAAS account system. It may be used alone, in lieu of the PDE 82-1, 82-2, 82-3 Excel documents, or in concert with other tools that LEAs are using to manage the supervision and evaluation process.

Access to the forms is granted by the LEAs and all information is securely and confidentially maintained by SAS EVAAS, requiring second levels of authentication. PDE does not have access to the summative evaluation information housed within the PEERS.

Through PEERS:

• Teachers, principals/administrators, and non-teaching specialists are linked to a most likely defaulted rating form based on PIMS data submitted by each LEA, with the ability to change to a different form as per local LEA decision.
• Demographic information including district name, school name, educator name and PPID is pre-populated.
• The School Performance Profile (SPP) Score is pre-populated by the PVAAS web application, with the flexibility to change the school, allow multiple schools and/or choose current year or prior year.
• Starting with SY2015-2016 PVAAS reporting, the PVAAS score for 3 year rolling average will be pre-populated into the final rating form 
• Rating information is aggregated to summary-level reporting.

SAS EVAAS, in conjunction with PDE, is providing a training webinar on March 10, 2015 from 3:00 to 4:00 PM for all LEAs interested in using PEERS and/or learning more about this free, voluntary tool.  This webinar will be archived and available for accessing on the PVAAS website within one week of this date.

Details to participate in the live webinar are included below. Pre-registration is not necessary.

Webinar Date and Time: March 10, 2015, 3:00 – 4:00 pm              

Computer & Phone Connection Information:

https://sasmeetings.webex.com/sasmeetings/j.php?J=710756117

Audio Access: 1-888-682-4285     Attendee code: 474-456-2 #

Questions regarding accessing PEERS may be sent to the “Contact Us” link on the PVAAS website at https://pvaas.sas.com

Questions specific to Act 82 Educator Effectiveness are to be directed to ra-edeff@pa.gov.