Lawsuit: Tennessee: use of students' academic standardized test scores in teacher evaluation for "non-tested" grades and subjects

from: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2015/02/new_nea_suit_in_tenn_challenge.html

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Teacher Beat NEA Lawsuit in Tennessee Challenges Evaluations of 'Non­Tested' Teachers
By Anthony Rebora on February 5, 2015 5:00 PM
Guest post by Anthony Rebora

The National Education Association's Tennessee affiliate today filed a new lawsuit challenging the state's use of students' standardized test scores in teacher evaluations, this time focusing on the system's effects on educators in "non-tested" grades and subjects.

Under Tennessee's much-watched evaluation system, unrolled in the 2011-12 school year, student test scores are factored into teachers' overall results through a statistical framework known as the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System that seeks to isolate educators' impact on student-achievement growth [emphasis added; (philosophically, this sounds like a good idea)].

Teachers in tested grades and subjects receive individual value-added scores that count for 35 percent of their overall evaluation score [emphasis added]. However, teachers in non-tested grades and subjects—more than half the educators in the state, according to the TEA—are given composite, school-based value-added scores (generally derived from students' scores in the tested subjects) that make up 25 percent of their evaluations [emphasis added].

The TEA's suit, which will be litigated by the National Education Association, names as co-plaintiffs two educators in non-tested subjects—a middle school visual arts teacher and a middle school physical education teacher—who say their evaluation scores dropped as a result of their school-based value-added scores. On account of their evaluation outcomes, the TEA says, one of the plaintiffs was denied a bonus, while the other lost her eligibility to be recommended for tenure [emphasis added].

Teachers in non-tested grades and subjects, the suit argues, are "being evaluated substantially based on school-level TVAAS estimates that do not reflect the contributions of these teachers to their students' learning in the courses they teach [emphasis added]. ... In fact, these school-level TVAAS estimates provide no indication at all as to the quality of the instruction of a particular teacher [emphasis added]."

The TEA contends that the system violates the educators' due process and equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution.

In response to the suit, Tennessee's top education official defended the state's use of student-growth measures to evaluate teachers.

"Teachers are getting more feedback than ever to help improve their classroom instruction, and ultimately, student learning," Candice McQueen, the state's recently appointed commissioner of education, said in an emailed statement. "We see evidence that this is working; Tennessee students are the fastest improving in the nation. The department remains committed to providing meaningful feedback to teachers based, in part, on student growth."

However, Douglas N. Harris, an associate professor of economics at Tulane University in New Orleans who has studied teacher-evaluation approaches, said that the issue of scoring teachers in non-tested grades and subjects remains a key sticking point for state evaluation systems that seek to incorporate student-achievement growth.

In particular, Harris said, use of school-wide value-added scores is widely regarded as "blatantly unfair" because educators are seen as "being evaluated based on the performance of other teachers [emphasis added]." "On this issue, the union has a very good point," he said.

Comments: this is just but one of many flawed versions of teacher evaluation systems created by politicians.  Similar to the new system created in Georgia, the laws are created, passed, implemented, and then after enormous input from those affected by the poor legislation, adjusted to calm the cry of those affected.  Specifically, the Student Learning Objectives were created (I helped create the middle school SLO for band), implemented, and used as part of the TKES evaluation system for this current school year (after a year or more of piloting).  Before 5 months had passed, due to the outrage, the Georgia politicians reversed the decision to have the SLOs impact the overall teacher evaluation score.

For politicians in general and Tennessee in particular, they should know (at least intuitively) that 80% of the student achievement factors come from the home environment, 6.6% from school-level factors, and 13.4% from teacher-level factors (Marzano, 2000).  When I first saw those statistics from a DVD with Dr. Marzano presenting in one of my doctoral classes, I was devastated.  I suspected a similar relationship of the three factors, but never to that degree.  Dr. Marzano immediately pointed out that the teacher-level influence has twice effect the as the school-level impact; that added some comfort, but not much.  Essentially, through the use of effective instructional strategies the teacher can offset some of the student-level factors, but the 20% of influence on student achievement will never overpower the 80% influence.

As such, it seems out of line for Tennessee (and other states?) to calculate 25% of a "non-test" teacher's evaluation score for 0% influence on a student's academic achievement due to other teachers and school-level factors (6.6% influence).

America, and the states, run as a democracy (which is a good thing).  The people who vote decide those in political office.

Marzano, R. J. (2000). A new era of school reform: Going where the research takes us. Aurora, CO: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.