New York Teacher Sheri Lederman’s Lawsuit Update
Recall the New York lawsuit pertaining to Long Island teacher Sheri Lederman? The teacher who by all accounts other than her recent (2013-2014) 1 out of 20 growth score is a terrific 4th grade, 18 year veteran teacher. She, along with her attorney and husband Bruce Lederman, are suing the state of New York to challenge the state’s growth-based teacher evaluation system. See prior posts about Sheri’s case here, here and here. I, along with Linda Darling-Hammond (Stanford), Aaron Pallas (Columbia University Teachers College), Carol Burris (Executive Director of the Network for Public Education Foundation), Brad Lindell (Long Island Research Consultant), Sean Corcoran (New York University) and Jesse Rothstein (University of California – Berkeley) are serving as part of Sheri’s team.
Bruce Lederman just emailed me with an update, and some links re: this update (below), and he gave me permission to share all of this with you.
The judge hearing this case recently asked the lawyers on both sides of Sheri’s case to brief the court by the end of this month (February 29, 2016) on a new issue, positioned and pushed back into the court by the New York State Education Department (NYSED). The issue to be heard pertains to the state’s new “moratorium” or “emergency regulations” related to the state’s high-stakes use of its growth scores, all of which is likely related to the political reaction to the opt-out movement throughout the state of New York, the publicity pertaining to the Lederman lawsuit in and of itself, and the federal government’s adoption of the recent Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) given its specific provision that now permits states to decide whether (and if so how) to use teachers’ students’ test scores to hold teachers accountable for their levels of growth (in New York) or value-added.
While the federal government did not abolish such practices via its ESSA, the federal New York Teacher Sheri Lederman’s Lawsuit Update | VAMboozled!: