Courts are Now Weighing in on Teacher Evaluations

With the debate raging on about what it takes to develop an effective teacher evaluation system, a New York state court recently made things even murkier. Acting Justice Roger McDonough, who presides in Albany, N.Y., recently backed a teacher’s lawsuit that claimed it was unlawful for her performance to be judged by student test scores.

Although the outcome of student performance has increasingly become a factor in teacher evaluations, along with curriculum, professionalism, and leadership, teachers have started fighting back against what they consider to be an ineffective way of judging their performance.

In McDonough’s ruling, he said that the process that determined that Sheri Lederman was ineffective, based on New York’s 2013-14 statistical growth model, was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Lederman had filed the lawsuit after receiving a high score on the student-growth portion one year, and then the lowest score on that part of her evaluation just one year later. As a result, she contended that the methodology to make such evaluations was ineffective.

Learn more about the lawsuits around the nation and the considerations at hand in our latest blog post.