Not all STEPS Plans are the same, and locals say that’s the beauty of these new performance evaluation tools. It's a welcome change from the old one-size-fits-all APPR model, and that’s especially welcome at BOCES, where their programs are as diverse as their student populations.
“We have CTE programming, and we have our NYSAA students as well as our exceptional education students, and then we’ve got a population of alternative education students, so with a BOCES, while there’s a lot of similarities to traditional classrooms, there are some stark differences, too,” said Donna Walters, president of the Erie 1 Professional Education Association.
NYSUT helped get the APPR system fixed in June of 2024 after years of advocacy, and locals began creating new performance evaluation plans or Standards-Based Educator Evaluation and Professional Support System Plans almost as soon as the state issued guidance in March of 2025.
Walters, who chairs the BOCES Leadership Council and serves on NYSUT’s Board of Directors, said the new STEPS Plans promise better results for BOCES. “We were thrilled when the new model was announced,” she said.
Under the old APPR system, administrators were often tasked with evaluating BOCES educators in settings they were unfamiliar with, and that made it hard to support them in a meaningful way.
For Tech Valley High School, a regional high school operated by the Capital Region BOCES and Questar III BOCES, finding independent evaluators that understand their unique environment has always been a challenge, said Andrew Betor, president of the Tech Valley High School Association.
“Our focus is project-based learning so that’s a different kind of classroom. It could appear less organized. It's definitely a little louder because kids are collaborating and moving around the room,” said Betor.
With STEPS, Betor said they can use more appropriate evaluation tools.
Betor said it’s early in the process, and the local is still weighing all their options, but fair observations continue to be emphasized. “I think at this point, we are leaning toward not having an independent evaluator and kind of relying on some of the other models,” Betor said.
The old APPR system also relied heavily on student test scores as a performance indicator, and that was complicated for BOCES educators.
“The part that was based on student performance became very problematic because of the vast number of different programs that we offer,” said Deborah Hillburn, president of the Orleans-Niagara BOCES Teachers Association. “It was just overtesting a lot of our population.”
Under the new STEPS Plans, Hillburn said, evaluation tools will be based on the individual needs within their buildings.
“We are excited about the new opportunity here to be able to make decisions at the local level,” she said.
Hillburn said they want to more explicitly tie evaluations to targeted support for new members, to increase effectiveness and improve retention as well as student outcomes.
According to preliminary plans, the Orleans-Niagara BOCES STEPS Plan could include annual performance reviews for untenured staff while tenured staff would be subject to formal observations every three years, and in-between years they will get to choose from a menu of different evaluation tools, to demonstrate growth as educators and highlight different areas of their practice that may not be seen in a traditional observation, Hillburn said.
“It was really our belief that if we invest time into the teachers in their untenured years, and we make sure we're establishing a better system to support them, then we can extend the observations needed for tenured staff,” said Hillburn.
At Erie 1 BOCES, Walters said they are considering adopting a tiered cycle of performance reviews, starting with annual reviews until members reach tenure and then every three years, eventually ending with reviews every five years. She and her members are also pushing for educators to have their choice of performance evaluation tools, based on the most popular results of a member survey. This would be coupled with regular goal-setting with an administrator, an initiative supported by the district.
“Everybody's got their comfort level, and so in an effort to be supportive of everybody and improve everybody as an educator, we'd like to give people the option to be evaluated and supported in a way that's comfortable for them,” Walters said.
Both Hillburn and Walters hope to have their plans finalized soon, so they can begin implementing them for the 2026–27 school year.
“We would like to do away with APPR as soon as possible,” Walters said. “We do not feel the need to drag this out for the next seven years.”