Carol Burris writes about the national significance of Sheri Lederman’s victory in court against New York state’s teacher evaluation system. She proved, thanks to the advocacy of her attorney and husband Bruce Lederman, that New York’s test-based model of evaluation was arbitrary and capricious. Every teacher can follow the path she blazed.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers

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NYS Parent says:

May 11, 2016 at 11:22 am

Carol Burris writes:

“It is time for the madness to stop. It is time for other teachers to stand up and legally challenge their scores.”

Most teachers are not married to lawyers willing to work pro-bono. This begs the questions, why didn’t NYSUT initiate this lawsuit? Why did it take the super-human efforts of these two individuals to fight the battle that the teacher’s union ignored?

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- Lenny Rothbart says:
  
  May 11, 2016 at 11:47 am
  
  I read that the judge didn’t apply this decision to the entire system due to some sort of rule change. What is the basis for not apply this decision more broadly?
  
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- NYS Parent says:
  
  May 11, 2016 at 11:58 am
  
  The moratorium on Common Core math and ELA eliminates the use of VAM. The Lederman case specifically addressed the use of Value Added Measures. Instead ALL teachers in NYS will noe be evaluated using the equally fraudulent and bogus SLO “growth” scores.
  
  Legal rulings have to be, by their nature, specific to the details of the case.
  
  Earth to NYSUT.
  
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Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:

May 11, 2016 at 11:49 am

Yes…a victory…but… teachers are STILL being evaluated and rated on student test scores of NYS regents and local exams as their SLO (Student Growth Objective). So, when those State officials, media, pundits, etc. say there is a moratorium on use of student test scores as part of teacher evaluation, that is NOT totally correct. So, things are NOT all peachy keen.

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- Duane Swacker says:
  
  May 11, 2016 at 12:54 pm
  
  “. . . that is NOT totally correct.”
  
  In other words it’s a big effin LIE!!
  
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- Laura H. Chapman says:
  
  May 11, 2016 at 2:26 pm
  
  Not an ounce of research to support the SLO (Student Growth Objective). It is a writing assignment for teachers, wherein they are forced to predict the test scores that various subgroups should achieve by the end of a course or year, based on a detailed (never-ending) series of questions about the prior achievement of the same students. The tests used in SLOs are often constucted at the district level and are not always vetted for reliablity and validity. At last count, SLOs were used in 26 states for the estimated 69% of teachers for whom there are not scores from standardized state tests. Like VAM, the SLO was pushed into schools as a means to impose pay-for-performance plans for all teachers. The attention given to VAM has totally overshadowed the SLO scam.
  
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- NYS Parent says:
  
  May 11, 2016 at 2:41 pm
  
  Thank you Laura. A scam indeed!
  
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Scisne says:

May 11, 2016 at 4:23 pm

Every teacher who is evaluated on the basis of students’ standardized test scores should vigorously oppose the evaluation, citing the authoritative “Statement on Using Value-Added Models (VAM) for Educational Assessment” made by the American Statistical Association (ASA) that — quoting The Washington Post — “slammed” VAM. Teachers should be vigorously backed-up in this opposition by their unions because the ASA Statement completely shreds the phony foundations of VAM.

A copy of the seven-page ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site and should be explained to every teacher by their union at individual site faculty meetings so that teachers are aware of what it says about how invalid it is to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers.

Even the anti-public school, anti-union Washington Post newspaper said this about the ASA Statement: “You can be certain that members of the American Statistical Association, the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, know a thing or two about data and measurement. The ASA just slammed the high-stakes ‘value-added method’ (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been increasingly embraced in states as part of school-reform efforts. VAM purports to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the ‘value’ a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been. THESE FORMULAS CAN’T ACTUALLY DO THIS (emphasis added) with sufficient reliability and validity, but school reformers have pushed this approach and now most states use VAM as part of teacher evaluations.”

The ASA Statement points out the following and many other failings of testing-based VAM:

> “VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation: Effects – positive or negative – attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model.”

> “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions.”

“System-level conditions” include everything from overcrowded and underfunded classrooms to district- and site-level management of the schools and to student poverty.

Fight back! Never, never, never give up!

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