Lawsuit: Stop evaluating teachers on test scores of students they never taught
Teacher Kim Cook (By Brian Kuger)
A group of teachers and their unions are filing a lawsuit against Florida officials that challenges the state’s educator evaluation system, under which many teachers are evaluated on the standardized test scores of students they do not teach.
The nine teachers filing the lawsuit include Kim Cook, who, as this post explains, was evaluated at Irby Elementary, a K-2 school where she works and was named Teacher of the Year last December. But 40 percent of that evaluation was based on test scores of students at Alachua Elementary, a school into which Irby feeds, whom she never taught. Really.
The other teachers filing the lawsuit all claim that they have been and/or will be evaluated on the scores of students they haven’t taught and on subjects they don’t teach. The lawsuit, also being filed by the National Education Association and the Florida Education, claims that the evaluation of teachers based on test scores of students they don’t teach or from subjects they don’t teach is unfair and violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clause of the Constitution.
Florida has been at the center of corporate-based school reform for years. As part of a