Another Lawsuit in Tennessee
As per Diane Ravitch’s blog, “The Tennessee Education Association filed a second lawsuit against the use if value-added assessment (called TVAAS in Tennessee), this time including extremist Governor Haslam and ex-TFA state commissioner Huffman in their suit.
As per a more detailed post about this lawsuit, “The state’s largest association for teachers filed a second lawsuit on behalf of a Knox County teacher, calling the use of the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS), which uses students’ growth on state assessments to evaluate teachers, unconstitutional.
Farragut Middle School eighth grade science teacher Mark Taylor believes he was unfairly denied a bonus after his value-added estimate was based on the standardized test scores of 22 of his 142 students. “Mr. Taylor teaches four upper-level physical science courses and one regular eighth grade science class,” said Richard Colbert, TEA general counsel, in a press release. “The students in the upper-level course take a locally developed end-of-course test in place of the state’s TCAP assessment. As a result, those high-performing students were not included in Mr. Taylor’s TVAAS estimate.”
Taylor received ‘exceeding expectations’ classroom observation scores, but a low value-added estimate reduced his final evaluation score below the requirement to receive the