Bruce Lederman went to court to help his wife Sheri fight the rating she got from a flawed computer program in New York. Icky Sheri! No teacher could have paid for the legal bills required to fight the state. Bruce wrote this article in the main newspaper in Charlotte to warn North Carolinians to stop wasting time on computerized test-ASD teacher evaluations.
The Lederman case might turn it to be a landmark decision that puts an end to Arne Duncan’s worst idea: judging teachers by their students’ scores.
Why did Bruce publish this article in North Carolina? He and Sheri are appearing at the Network for Public Education annual conference in Raleigh to tell their story to activists from across the nation.
Wish you were here!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Every teachers’ association in every state should post on its bulletin board in every school a copy of the American Statistical Association’s “ASA Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Education Evaluation” so that teachers and administrators clearly know that evaluating teachers on the basis of student test scores has no statistical validity and that if a teacher receives a negative evaluation based on student test scores the ASA Statement will be used in evidence to refute the validity of this kind of evaluation.
Every teachers’ association in every state should also review the ASA Statement with every faculty at every school site in its district so that teachers are fully informed.
That’s what teachers’ associations are supposed to do. How many do it? And how many have any kind of effective regular public communication program to inform their respective communities about such matters or about the true purpose and function of tenure?
The essential point that needs to be made to the general public nationwide about tenure is that it’s key purpose is to protect our nation from falling victim of the kind of official lies that led to fascism and Nazism. Already we’ve had so-called “history” textbooks pushed by Texas education authorities that tell students that slavery in our nation never happened, that all those black people who were brought here to work the plantations under inhuman conditions were “guest workers.” Only teachers who have the protection of tenure can stand up against such deception by authorities and refuse to teach it. Before tenure, what was taught in our schools changed each time there was a political change in local, county, or state governments. Tenure stopped that and enabled children to learn genuine truth, instead being force fed the fictional political ideology of those in power at the moment. Tenure protects the roots of our nation’s freedoms.
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Well said. Tenure helped a certain LA teacher speak against Jon Deasy’s mass replacement of teachers with iPads, also for example.
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John Deasy.
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Hats off again to the Ledermans for standing up for all of us. I had such a long week at school and figured I’d just check in on Diane’s blog before calling it a day. It was great to read Bruce Lederman’s op-ed piece. Thanks.
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They will be written in the annals of law with a landmark decision. The Ledermans are to be thanked for bearing the burden of this case for every teacher in this country and for their efforts on behalf of excellence in public education.
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Any indication of when the decision is coming?
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If they win their case against VAM evaluation, will it have any bearing on the use of SLOs or SGOs?
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Rage, good question for Bruce
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My ratings final ratings using local SLO “growth” models:
2013: Effective
2014: Highly Effective
2015: Developing
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No surprise there.
Makes perfect sense.
Teachers often go from “highly effective” to “developing” in a single year, just as violinists often go from concertmaster in the NY Philharmonic to last third chair in the middle school orchestra in a single year.
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