Evaluation system is ‘irrational,’ teacher argues in court
Bruce and Sheri Lederman. (Jimmy Vielkind/POLITICO New York)
ALBANY—A Long Island elementary school teacher argued before a judge Wednesday that part of the state's teacher evaluation system is based on a "statistical black box" and should be thrown out.
Sheri Lederman, who teaches fourth grade in Great Neck, said it was “arbitrary and capricious” for the state to knock her 2013-14 rating from "highly effective" to "effective" after an algorithm showed that according to standardized tests, her students not not registered as much "growth" as similar students around the state.
The case has drawn interest from education policy makers and teachers groups as New York continues to fight over the best way to evaluate teachers. In March, the Legislatureamended its evaluation law to require “independent” observations of educators and perhaps to give heavier weight to performance on Common Core-aligned standardized tests. Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed for tougher measures after 96 percent of teachers were evaluated as "highly effective" or "effective" under the original framework passed in 2012.
Sheri Lederman said after the 90-minute hearing, with her husband and attorney Bruce by her side, that the standardized evaluations are unnecessary and that they unfairly pressure and stigmatize classroom teachers. In the courtroom, Bruce Lederman made a narrower argument: The growth measures that account for 20 percent of a teacher's evaluation are “irrational,” he said, because they are based on a curve and lead to a “'Survivor'-type competition” that violates the law.
“It may be that the governor wants to jar teachers and shake up the union, but the law that was passed does not allow that,” Bruce Lederman said.
The state Education Department currently rates student growth not within a teacher's crop, but using a projection of where they should be based on students' prior test scores, socioeconomic backgrounds and whether they have any known learning disabilities.
Lederman argued that this modeling does not allow for an apples-to-apples comparison of a teacher's students and should be invalidated. He also said it was impossible for teachers to understand at the beginning of a school year, an argument that a state lawyer disputed.
Acting Supreme Court Justice Roger McDonough pressed him on whether a better model could be applied, and Lederman suggested simply administering a test on the first and last day of school on the curriculum for a given year would suffice. The judge leveled the same question at Colleen Galligan, an assistant attorney general representing the State Education Department and its leaders.
“This is an accurate measure because what we need to do is compare, relatively, how [Sheri Lederman]'s students did relative to similar students,” Galligan said. “When Evaluation system is 'irrational,' teacher argues in court | POLITICO: