A federal judge in Florida dismissed a lawsuit against the state evaluation system, declaring that it was unfair to rate teachers based on the scores of students they never taught but not unconstitutional.
The evaluation system may be stupid; it may be irrational; it may be unfair; but it does not violate the Constitution. So says the judge.
An article in the Florida Education Association newsletter described the ruling:
“The federal lawsuit, known as Cook v. Stewart, was filed last year by the FEA, the National Education Association and seven accomplished teachers and the local education associations in Alachua, Escambia and Hernando counties. The lawsuit challenged the evaluation of teachers based on the standardized test scores of students they do not teach or from subjects they do not teach. They brought suit against the Florida commissioner of education, the State Board of Education and the school boards of those three counties, who have implemented the evaluation system to comply with 2011’s Senate Bill 736.
“On Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker dismissed FEA’s challenges to the portions of SB 736 that call for teachers to be evaluated based upon students and/or subjects the teachers do not teach, though he expressed reservations on the practice.
We are disheartened by the judge’s ruling. Judge Walker acknowledged the many problems with this evaluation system, but he ruled that they did not meet the standard to be declared unconstitutional. We are evaluating what further steps we might take in this legal process.
Judge Walker indicated his discomfort with the evaluation process in his order.
“The unfairness of the evaluation system as implemented is not lost on this Court,” he wrote. “We have a teacher evaluation system in Florida that is supposed to measure the individual effectiveness of each teacher. But as the Plaintiffs have shown, the standards for evaluation differ significantly. FCAT teachers are being evaluated using an FCAT VAM that provides an individual measurement of a teacher’s contribution to student improvement in the subjects they teach.” He noted that the FCAT VAM has been applied to teachers whose students are tested in a subject that teacher does not teach and to teachers who are measured on students they have never taught, writing that “the FCAT VAM has been applied as a school-wide composite score that is the same for every teacher in the school. It does not contain any measure of student learning growth of the … teacher’s own students.”
In his ruling, Judge Walker indicated there were other problems.
“To make matters worse, the Legislature has mandated that teacher ratings be used to make important employment decisions such as pay, promotion, assignment, and retention,” he wrote. “Ratings affect a teacher’s professional reputation as well because they are made public — they have even been printed in the newspaper. Needless to say, this Court would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would find this evaluation system fair to non-FCAT teachers, let alone be willing to submit to a similar evaluation system.”
“This case, however, is not about the fairness of the evaluation system,” Walker wrote. “The standard of review is not whether the evaluation policies are good or bad, wise or unwise; but whether the evaluation policies are rational within the meaning of the law. The legal standard for invalidating legislative acts on substantive due process and equal protection grounds looks only to whether there is a conceivable rational basis to support them,” even though this basis might be “unsupported by evidence or empirical data.”
Please link the actual order
I must say that that’s a pretty low bar that the judge set. Some conceivable rational explanation maybe?
A lot of things that are highly unlikely are conceivable.
It’s conceivable that the judge is a brain in a vat. Not likely, but conceivable.
It is very basic: teachers in Florida have equal protection of the law to be treated like s**t. I’m only being partially facetious: I actually hear similar rationales all the time from certain people on Constitutional matters. If a horrid and irrational law is being applied “equally” that’s all some people think is needed to pass muster.
As I responded in the Houston court case thread:
Ah, the state of the judiciary these days.
We don’t care about fairness, equity and/or justice!
No, the only thing that matters is if it is legal or not-of course by our own interpretation of the law in which we squeeze the meaning of words so hard until they appear to mean what we want them to mean and then by force of our “judgement” they legally mean what we want them to mean.
We judges, of course, being above the rest of you non-judges by reason of our own proclamations.
This is America, Bob. Everyone has a right to be a jackass.
The ruling:
https://docs.google.com/a/pgcps.org/file/d/0ByxbxVaTBvCIa0FmSUs3R0p1Y3c/edit
Or here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByxbxVaTBvCIa0FmSUs3R0p1Y3c/edit?usp=sharing
Judge Walker did not dismiss the law, he dismissed part of the law suit and allowed other parts to move forward.
Judge Walker did his job. It’s not the place for the courts to rule on whether a law is wise of unwise. We would have a horrible system if judges could overturn laws enacted by elected officials solely because the judge thought the law was dumb.
I’m searching for the text of the ruling, I’ll post it when I find it.
Howard.
My bad, looks like the judge issued a summary judgement on the other counts 😦
Click to access Cook_Summary_Judgment_Order.pdf
Click to access Order_on_Motion_to_Dismiss.pdf
The judge had every opportunity to use the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Although the policies “impose special burdens upon defined classes” they may do so without violating equal protection because they are rationally related to “achiev[ing] permissible ends.”
He easily could have concluded that this burden is in no way “rationally” related to the ends.
The Equal Protection Clause is usually employed for cases of gender, race, sexual orientation, religious, etc. discrimination. In this case, music teachers are being discriminated against and the judge misses the boat in claiming the state has a rational expectation that these teachers can impact students they do not teach.
“He easily could have concluded that this burden is in no way “rationally” related to the ends.”
Ah, the state of the judiciary these days.
We don’t care about fairness, equity and/or justice!
No, the only thing that matters is if it is legal or not-of course by our own interpretation of the law in which we squeeze the meaning of words so hard until they appear to mean what we want them to mean and then by force of our “judgement” they legally mean what we want them to mean.
We judges, of course, being above the rest of you non-judges by reason of our own proclamations.
Last line is straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
Seems like the definition of libel to me. Not to mention actual damage to income.
I just tried to leave a comment and the site doesn’t seem to be working. Here is a second try.
In my district in Florida I was asked to sign an ethics statement and to live by it. The expectations for teachers don’t seem to apply to others in this case.
I work at a center school for the lowest one percent of students. Last year my VAM score was the district’s average score because our students came for all over the district. I understand that everyone at my school will receive the school’s average score this year. Yes, there are factors that are put into the VAM equation for teachers of special needs students but I haven’t found any research saying that the math has been vetted. Heck, it might not be fair but it isn’t against the law.
The tool used for teacher evaluation wasn’t designed for teachers in center schools and there isn’t any flexibility either from what I understand to keep subjectivity out of the process. Teachers of students with significant disabilities spend a lot of time on custodial care for students. Yes, teachers are supposed to teach but it doesn’t work that way in real life. The tool doesn’t evaluate how well a teacher cares for students in this way and students can’t learn if personal needs are in the way.
Furthermore, it seems like IEP goals, are second fiddle to the way the evaluation tool is requiring teachers to teach. Best practices for students with significant disabilities are not part of the evaluation tool and one must mechanically do through a process and say specific things in prescribed ways of they don’t count since that would be subjective.
Oddly enough if one does something above and beyond the check list for the evaluation for students it isn’t recognized by my administration but the administration has added other ideas of their that aren’t part of the evaluation check list and that feels subjective.
I am no legal scholar and it does sound crazy that a judge would rule in this way given the situation but here is my question.. the judge is obviously admitting the absurdity of the situation. So in effect it sounds like the lawyers for these unfairly treated teachers need to find THE RIGHT component of the law to go after and hopefully they will. If the judge truly cared about the situation, could he not have rendered his decision with an inclusion as to WHAT particular area of a convoluted legal system IS MORE APPLICABLE (henceforth arguable)?
VAM ultimately needs to be tried in the court of public opinion… ASSUMING this decision is widely broadcast, it MIGHT help voters in FLA wake up to VAM’s flaws and get the law changed… but that ASSUMES that the main stream media will put this on the front page where it belongs, that editorial writers will pick it up, that a show like 60 Minutes will feature a segment on the teachers who filed this suit… and that the voters will get on the phone and complain to their legislators…
It is interesting, though, that those of us who are saddened at the weakening of public schools by unfair legislation have hoped the courts would be the last barrier to protect them. But this decision by a judge puts it back on legislators to not be unfair. Eventually, they will have to face consequences of not being so. While it may seem they don’t care now, their actions are not inconsequential and likely not always slanted in the favor of their cause. There has to be balance for a state or nation to maintain itself. So, holding out for the court isn’t going to be the answer here. Time to rethink what could be.
Question:
Are these level judges elected in the state of Florida?
Do they have “tenure” like some judges i.e., lifetime appointments?
level of judges, not level judges because obviously he’s not “level”.
I need to wake up before I post!
He was appointed by the Obomber so he is not elected. So, like any of these appointed judges he obviously knows who butters his bread, the same oligarchs who back the Obomber, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten through the nomination process, you can bet on that.
I believe that he does have “tenure”, i.e., a lifetime appointment.
This judge needs to be VAMed.
TAGO
Speaking of legal issues, it looks like the honorary chair of educational thought leaders and the head of the chicken wing of the Democratic party is on the hot seat Look out Andy, don’t mess with the feds (and the Clinton machine):
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Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have issued a grand jury subpoena seeking emails, text messages and other records from all the members of the anticorruption commission that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo abruptly shut down in March, three people briefed on the matter said on Monday.
The action by prosecutors from the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, comes just weeks after he took the unusual step of publicly criticizing the governor’s shutdown of the panel and took possession of its investigative files.
The subpoena, which was served on the commission’s former counsel, Kelly Donovan, seeks documents pertaining to the formation of the panel, known as a Moreland Commission, based on the 1907 Moreland Act. It also sought documents about how the panel was run, overseen and closed, according to the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
Continue reading the main story
The issuance of the subpoena, and new details about recent meetings of several Moreland Commission employees and prosecutors in Mr. Bharara’s office, provided the strongest suggestion to date that the criminal investigation may be examining allegations of interference with the commission.
It was unclear what potential crimes were being investigated and whose conduct was being examined. A spokesman for Mr. Bharara’s office, James M. Margolin, would confirm neither that a subpoena had been issued nor that a criminal investigation was underway.
The subpoena was sent to Ms. Donovan, who had been seconded to the Moreland Commission from her post as executive deputy attorney general for criminal justice, and returned to that job after the commission was shut down. As the commission’s former lawyer, she was sent the subpoena with the expectation that she would notify the panel’s former members that their correspondence and other documents were being sought, one of the people said.
The subpoena also asks for a host of other material previously turned over voluntarily by the commission, these people said.
Matthew Wing, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, would not discuss the suggestion that federal prosecutors were examining possible interference by his administration. In an email, Mr. Wing said, “The Moreland Commission was clear at the conclusion that they were referring all cases to various prosecutors — to the extent the U.S. attorney wants to investigate those cases we encourage all state offices to cooperate.”
Last month, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, dismissed suggestions that there could have been anything wrong in his office’s interfering with the commission’s investigations. “It’s my commission. I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine. It is controlled by me,” he said last month, according to Crain’s New York Business.
Mr. Cuomo set up the panel, formally known as the Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, in July with great fanfare. But he disclosed on March 29 that he was disbanding it in exchange for the Legislature’s agreement to pass what he called strengthened ethics laws as part of the adoption of a new state budget.
Five days later, Mr. Bharara wrote to the panel’s two chairmen and senior staff members, sharply questioning the decision. Mr. Bharara suggested that Mr. Cuomo had abandoned his commitment to fight corruption, trading it for the short-term political gain of the budget deal.
On April 10, Mr. Bharara and the commission’s chairmen reached an agreement under which his prosecutors took possession of all of the panel’s documents and computer files, including materials its staff had developed in several corruption investigations, some focused on state legislators.
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Since then, federal prosecutors from Mr. Bharara’s public corruption unit, led by Arlo Devlin-Brown, an assistant United States attorney, have been working on two main issues.
One avenue is a focus on following up on the investigations that were interrupted by the commission’s shutdown. Prosecutors have met with the commission’s former staff — some of them former prosecutors themselves — in preparation for taking up the unfinished investigations, according to several people briefed on the meetings.
Federal prosecutors also appear to be examining any actions that may have interfered with the panel’s operation. Prosecutors have asked the panel’s investigators and staff members about allegations of interference by Cuomo administration officials, including the governor’s top aides and his senior appointees to the panel, the people said.
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Much of the questioning, several of the people said, has focused on the conduct of the commission’s executive director, Regina Calcaterra, who, they said, had repeatedly sought to prevent commission subpoenas that might reflect poorly on the governor from being issued and tried to divert investigators from focusing on his allies.
When federal prosecutors took possession of the commission’s documents and computers, they also collected the BlackBerry smartphones the commission had provided to its staff, the people said. In the commission’s early days, senior members of its staff were told to communicate with Mr. Cuomo’s aides only via BlackBerry PIN messages, not recorded on government servers.
Mr. Wing defended the use of PIN messages as “a common way that many people communicate in 2014.”
Cuomo abruptly shuts down his anti-corruption commission, Coincidentally, receives $800,000 from Eva Moskowitz and then pushes legislation that opens the flood gates for Success Academy.
And the feds are now investigating.
I would be very worried Andrew. But I’m sure the weasel in you will find enough subordinates to throw under the bus so you can keep the mirage of a Cuomo presidency alive just a little longer.
The judges comments echo what would occur in proceedings to dismiss a teacher based on VAM performance ratings. The entire system is so fraught with technical and instrumental problems that it would tide in knots any dismissal hearing. The fate of VAM will not lie in constitutional rulings, but death by a thousand lawyer cuts. Let a school district lose a couple of these cases and VAM will be on the way out. Unfortunately, along the way, so many teacher’s professional standing will be damaged, but at the end of the day, this system cannot withstand sustained challenges to the logic and application of the VAM methods. Knowing school board attorneys as I do, I can imagine the conversation they would have with a superintendent who is pushing to dismiss a teacher(s) based on a VAM score.
“The legal standard for invalidating legislative acts on substantive due process and equal protection grounds looks only to whether there is a conceivable rational basis to support them,” even though this basis might be “unsupported by evidence or empirical data.”
How does this make any kind of sense, legal or otherwise? Somebody, please enlighten me.
See my comment above about the current state of the judiciary.
The basic principle is that for laws that don’t involve a suspect classification such as race, courts will defer to the judgment of legislatures unless the law literally doesn’t make any sense. The policy behind the standard is essentially separation of powers.
What will happen when we lose faith in all our American Institutions?
So blacklisting and public humiliation by force of the government are now constitutional.
Isn’t that what registered sex offenders lists do too, though?
Judging an individual, based on the performance or actions of another individual, is the definition of capricious, arbitrary, random, and irrational.
Judgment by peripheral association? This goes against the inalienable right of man to be judged by his own deeds.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Reblogged this on rightfulwriter and commented:
Does this make sense to anyone?
“To make matters worse, the Legislature has mandated that teacher ratings be used to make important employment decisions such as pay, promotion, assignment, and retention,” he wrote. “Ratings affect a teacher’s professional reputation as well because they are made public — they have even been printed in the newspaper. Needless to say, this Court would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would find this evaluation system fair to non-FCAT teachers, let alone be willing to submit to a similar evaluation system.
Details below.
If America’s system of justice does not permit one person to be penalized by the government for the actions of another, then I don’t understand how any judge could feel the Florida VAM system is constitutional. Perhaps this judge’s pay and continuing employment should depend on the performance of other judges.
My take is: All is fair in love, war, and politics.
Does anyone happen to know how this was followed up on? It mentioned above that they were evaluating further steps since the judge acknowledged all the problems with how it’s currently set up.