Teachers have seen the future, and it is judicial

Teachers, through unions, are using the courts to fight for an end to test-based evaluations they say are arbitrary and unfair, reports Emma Brown for The Washington Post. Two of the nation's most contentious battles over teaching have shifted from legislators to judges, who will now potentially decide how teachers are hired, fired, and paid. Value-added scores account for 50 percent of evaluations in some states and a smaller portion in others, yet just a fraction of educators teach subjects and grade levels tested. Art and music, for example, have no tests, but in some states teachers of these disciplines are scored based on how students perform in other subjects, or based on performance of all students in their school. A federal district court judge opined last year that Florida's evaluations were unfair, but also found them legal. The Florida teachers have appealed, and the case is now before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Tennessee teachers filed a similar lawsuit in early February. In other cases in Rochester, Syracuse, Houston, and in Knox County, Tennessee, teachers have attacked the value-added model as arbitrary and unreliable. The latest union complaint, in New Mexico February 13, argued that evaluations violate teachers' due process rights because they are "based on flawed methodology, erroneous records, and inaccurate data." More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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