In Florida, teachers are given ratings based on the scores of students they never taught.
Teachers in several counties challenged the law in court.
The judge agreed that the system was unfair, but refused to overturn it.
Where teachers are concerned, Junk Science is just fine.
It is okay to rate a teacher based on the performance on tests of students the teacher never met, never taught.
This is “reform.” Thanks, Arne Duncan, for Race to the Top.
Thanks for introducing this insane, stupid policy into our nation’s schools.
The true education miracle will be if American public education can survive eight years of stupid policies like this one in Florida.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A true education miracle, would be for the Florida teachers to walk the hell out of their schools en masse in response to this idiotic ruling.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass
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I dream of that miraculous walkout day every night. I doubt it will come in my lifetime.
I was actually loudly attacked by a colleague today at a PD session for saying that we need to stand up for our professional rights and demand respect. She felt we needed to toe whatever line they draw and go along to get along because none of this crap is “going away anytime soon”. So, so sad. She really believes by kissing up she will be able to survive the purge of experienced, expensive teachers that is on the horizon due to this heinous VAM law.
Without the right to strike our Florida union is powerless. We were told by the FEA to wait on the court cases to resolve, that would be the way we would be made whole. It is very clear that is not going to happen under the current anti-labor, anti-citizen judicial system.
Then we are told that we must lobby and bring change at the ballot box. With our gerrymandered districts that would take a huge sea change of voter sentiment, possible but unlikely.
We are without recourse at this point. We can hope that parents and citizens who care will fight for us but even if that happens it will be too late to save those who will receive their second low VAM score this year and lose their teaching license permanently and become unemployed.
We will sit back and watch as our profession slowly disintegrates and our colleagues (and ourselves) are picked off, one by one, and forced out of the public school system forever. The FEA can do little to prevent the carnage since we are “right to work” in Florida.
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You are never without recourse. It only seems like it when they make the rules, and you believe you must follow them. Eventually in their greed they will force people to break the fetters of their “rules”. Hopefully sooner rather than later. We won the 8 hour day, we got rid of child labor, we won civil rights, we can do this, we *have* to do this!
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The judge had to apply the “rational basis” test here, and that’s very low bar. Basically it means that if a lawmaker puts forth some, any “rational basis” for a law a court won’t overturn it as long as it isn’t unlawful:
“Walker wrote that he’d be “hard pressed” to find other people “willing to submit to a similar evaluation system.”
But he said he could not decide the case based on whether the new evaluation system was fair. Instead, it had to be decided on whether the state had a “rational basis” for the new law — and it did, he wrote, as it hoped it would focus schools on improving student learning.”
The state “hopes” the unfair (and ridiculous) test will “improve student learning” so that’s all they need.
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Acknowledging the “unfairness” of the evaluations, Walker said that a system should measure the individual effectiveness of each teacher, but 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….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.”
I’m wondering what they paid for the evaluation system. Probably a lot, huh?
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So the legislature can’t violate employment law based on race, creed, color, or gender, but they can randomly award, deduct, or fire, irrespective of the merits of the work a person is doing? I’m not buying that line of thought, and I never will. That goes against the most fundamental principle of employment, merit.
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The legal system is neither a rational system nor a system based on evidence but rather on law. One has to be married to a prominent lawyer and judge to get the insiders view of our terrible legal system. If the laws suck – as is often the case, because they are based created based on ignorance, fear, political pressures, interest groups, economic interests, etc., all kinds of injustices can and are perpetuated by it. Take a look at family law, or tort law, or intellectual property law, or labor law, and you will see the pile of absurdities our legal system has mounted – and how poorly they reflect on the politicians – often inept, incompetent and corrupt, who build them. Administrative practices are even worse, since these have even fewer safeguards for quality and power checking, and are passed by the whims of the current administrator(s) in charge. There are few safeguards against stupidity – since our constitutions say little about that and provides few protections against irrationality and ignorance. This underlines the need for teachers to support unions in their political fight counterbalance to the powerful forces aligned against them.
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