PA Principals Association Executive Director, Dr. Paul Healey, requests that PDE alter the implementation of the Principal Effectiveness System for 2014-15. I am making a formal request on behalf of the school leaders across the state in reference to the Principal Effectiveness System. We are asking PDE to immediately consider suspending the Correlation piece (15%) for the 2014-15 school year and make it optional this year along with the elective/SLO piece and require it for 2015-16 instead. Our request is based on the following reasons:

•  The current training for the Correlation and SLO pieces has just begun and it is already October and thus it is safe to say that many school leaders and superintendents will not be trained until early December
• The training on the correlation piece suggests that school leaders examine their data over the summer and then begin the critical conversations with their supervisors in late Summer or Early Fall.  This certainly makes sense because the correlation piece should inform the SLOs to be developed, thus they should work in partnership
• Because the training is now just starting, school leaders do not have ample time to concentrate on these critical conversations and thus will not have a full year to work on their “plans” which will become part of their annual evaluation
• In addition, we believe implementing this piece right now when school leaders are concentrating on the teacher effectiveness pieces as well as the framework for learning for themselves places a heavy burden on them and risks a poor implementation of the new system
• The teacher effectiveness system was implemented in phases in which the first phase only required the 50% observation and building level data.  We believe the principal effectiveness system should also be phased in whereby only the new framework for leadership and the building level data are required for 2014-15.
• Finally, as we have been traveling around the state meeting with our members, we have clearly heard their frustrations about feeling overwhelmed with the implementation of PA Core, Keystones, Teacher Effectiveness and Principal Effectiveness. These are people who sincerely want to do a good job with all of these initiatives, but feel the plate is now overflowing.

   Therefore, we respectfully request that PDE reconsider the current phase in cycle for Principal Effectiveness and only require the framework for leadership and the building level data for 2014 15 and the other two components (correlation and elective/SLO) required for 2015-16.

   We thank you in advance for your consideration and are willing to discuss this matter at any time in the very near future.   

Thanks, Paul