Contentious teacher-related policies moving from legislatures to the courts
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| American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten expects to see more challenges to “value-added” teacher evaluations. (Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press) |
Opponents of the nation’s teacher unions won a landmark victory last year in a California lawsuit that challenged tenure protections, a case that became the beginning of a national effort to roll back teacher tenure laws in state courts.
Now the largest unions in the country are using a similar tactic, as teachers turn to the courts to fight for one of their most pressing interests: An end to test-based evaluations they say are arbitrary and unfair.
The lawsuits show that two of the nation’s most contentious battles over the teaching profession are shifting from legislative arenas to the courts, giving judges the chance to make decisions that could shape the way teachers are hired, fired and paid. Union critics and wealthy advocates have hired lawyers to take on the teachers; the teachers, through their unions, have gone before the bench to go after state officials and their policies.
The latest foray into the courtroom began Feb. 13, when New Mexico teachers sued state officials over an evaluation system that relies heavily on student test scores. Tennessee teachers also sued their state officials this month, arguing that most teachers’ evaluations are based on the test scores of students they don’t actually teach. Florida teachers brought a similar lawsuit last year; it is now in federal appeals court, while other complaints are pending in Texas and New York.
Union officials say they expect to see more lawsuits in the future, especially over evaluations that use complex and controversial algorithms — called “value-added models” — to figure out how much of a student’s learning can be attributed to their teacher.
“There will be more challenges because things are not being seen as credible and fair,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which joined the New Mexico lawsuit. “What we’ve gotten to is this routinized, mechanized displacement of human judgment, and that’s what I think you’re seeing — that is the underlying issue that is the root of this agita about evaluations.”
“It’s ridiculous that we have to go to the courts,” Weingarten said. But she said that New Mexico education officials and other supporters of test-based evaluation are deaf to evidence that the evaluations aren’t working.
Critics say that the unions are exaggerating both the problems associated with value-added scores and the weight that they carry in evaluations. Value-added scores account for up to 50 percent of evaluations in some states, and a smaller portion in many others, with the remainder of teachers’ ratings comprised of classroom observations and other measures.
“Essentially teacher unions don’t want any evaluation,” said Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institute and a supporter of value-added measures. “That’s what they’re angling for.”
Until recently, teachers’ evaluations in many jurisdictions were based almost exclusively on principals’ observations, and the vast majority of teachers were rated satisfactory. But the Obama administration made test-based evaluations a requirement for any state that wanted to compete forRace to the Top grant money or win relief from the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Now 35 states require student achievement to be a significant factor in teacher evaluations, and many school districts are using those evaluations to make decisions about teacher bonuses and as a basis for firings.
Most states are using the value-added models to determine how much Contentious teacher-related policies moving from legislatures to the courts - The Washington Post:
