Tennessee’s Trout/Taylor Value-Added Lawsuit Dismissed
As you may recall, one of 15 important lawsuits pertaining to teacher value-added estimates across the nation (Florida n=2, Louisiana n=1, Nevada n=1, New Mexico n=4, New York n=3, Tennessee n=3, and Texas n=1 – see more information here) was situated in Knox County, Tennessee.
Filed in February of 2015, with legal support provided by the Tennessee Education Association (TEA), Knox County teacher Lisa Trout and Mark Taylor charged that they were denied monetary bonuses after their Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS — the original Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS)) teacher-level value-added scores were miscalculated. This lawsuit was also to contest the reasonableness, rationality, and arbitrariness of the TVAAS system, as per its intended and actual uses in this case, but also in Tennessee writ large. On this case, Jesse Rothstein (University of California – Berkeley) and I were serving as the Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses.
Unfortunately, however, last week (February 17, 2016) the Plaintiffs’ team received aCourt order written by U.S. District Judge Harry S. Mattice Jr. dismissing their claims. While the Court had substantial questions about the reliability and validity of the TVAAS, the Court determined that the State satisfied the very low threshold of the “rational basis test,” at legal issue. I should note here, however, that all of the evidence that the lawyers for the Plaintiffs collected via their “extensive discovery,” including the affidavits both Jesse and I submitted on Plaintiffs’ behalves, were unfortunately not considered in Judge Mattice’s motion to dismiss. This, perhaps, makes sense given some of the assertions made by the Court, forthcoming.
Ultimately, the Court found that the TVAAS-based, teacher-level value-added policy at Tennessee’s Trout/Taylor Value-Added Lawsuit Dismissed | VAMboozled!: