By now, all members covered by the new teacher evaluation process should have received the UFT’s end-of-year guide to the system. This is the first — and we hope the last — guide to ending a school year under this particular teacher evaluation and development system. The UFT is in talks with the city. The guide and more information on the evaluation system can be found on the evaluation page.

Summative conferences will run from April 25 to June 20:

This is a mandatory, one-on-one conference with your principal or evaluator that should occur during the school day.

• It is an opportunity to discuss the year including your classroom observations and any artifacts you submitted.
• It is also an opportunity to review your professional goals for the year, how you met them and the work you see ahead.
• Be prepared to advocate for your strengths.
• Be ready to refer to your observation reports and your responses to them.
• Be armed with any remaining artifacts that you may have chosen to submit.

Your professional records:

Here are some documents you could take to your summative conference:

• A copy of your teacher evaluation option form and the videotape form from your initial planning conference.
• Copies of all observation reports; copies of all feedback and your responses to feedback, if applicable; and any other documentation or notes you have on your observations and feedback.
• Documentation or notes on any and all requests you have made for assistance, materials or professional development and on the responses to those requests.
• Copies of all artifacts submitted and any feedback and scoring on artifacts.

It is also important that you keep records in case down the road you need to appeal your year-end rating. See a more complete list of records to keep.

Artifacts:

Although the April 11 deadline for submitting artifacts has passed, you may submit artifacts at the summative conference. Artifacts give teachers an opportunity to demonstrate their work in a way that might not be captured through an observation. Teachers do not have to submit artifacts but may submit up to eight.

Last day for observations is June 6:

It is entirely the evaluator’s responsibility to conduct the required number of observations, but if you have not had the required number of observations prior to the summative conference you may want to document that in writing and give it to your chapter leader both as an email and a hard copy.

Your rating on observations and other measures of effectiveness:

No later than 10 days after your summative conference, you should receive your rating for the portion of your evaluation on observations and other measures of teacher effectiveness. Each Danielson component in all four domains is rated, and then these smaller individual ratings are combined through a complex formula into a single number between 1 and 4 that will fall into a category for highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective (known as HEDI categories).

(After the rating on the 1-to-4 scale is calculated, it is converted to a 60-point scale, representing 60 percent of your overall year-end rating. You can find more information on this at the UFT's evaluation page.)