The husband of a Great Neck elementary school teacher said a state Supreme Court judge’s ruling to vacate his wife’s “inefficient” teacher rating last Tuesday was a major step in fixing a broken teacher evaluation system.
Bruce Lederman, a lawyer who represented his wife, Sheri Lederman, said the couple was happy the court ruled in their favor after a lengthy court proceeding.
“We are gratified that after an 18-month battle the judge recognized that Sheri’s rating was completely irrational and set it aside,” Bruce Lederman said. “It’s a very difficult legal undertaking to convince a judge that something that the state of New York or one of its agencies did was irrational.”
Sheri Lederman, a longtime educator in the Great Neck School District and currently a fourth grade teacher at E.M. Baker Elementary School, filed suit against the state Education Department in 2014 after she was rated “ineffective” on a portion pertaining to student exam performance just one year after she was rated “highly effective.”
Currently, the state Education Department uses a computer system that analyzes standardized test scores to determine a teacher’s “student growth score.” The score is based on the improvements made by students over a year-long period.
During the 2012-13 school year, Sheri Lederman received 14 points out of 20 on her teacher’s evaluation growth score. She received a one out of 20 on the “student growth” portion of the state’s three-pronged teacher assessment for 2013-14.
While Supreme Court Justice Roger McDonough ruled in favor of vacating Sheri’s teacher evaluation, the court declined to make a decision on whether or not to fix the rating system.
“The Court fully recognizes that it does not have the educational background, resources, or time to propose a meaningful replacement for New York’s growth model system or to propose sound fixes for any arguable flaws of said system, and as such does not lightly enter into a critical analysis of this matter,” McDonough’s decision read. “Regardless, the Court is constrained, on this record, to conclude that petitioner has met her high burden and established that petitioner’s growth score and rating for school year 2013-2014 are arbitrary and capricious.”
State test scores currently count for almost half of a teacher or principal’s evaluation.
In December, the state Board of Regents voted to place a four-year moratorium preventing test scores from being used as a disciplinary measure in teacher evaluation ratings or against students.
Former Education Commissioner John B. King Jr., Assistant Commissioner Candace H. Shyer and the department’s Office of State Assessment are listed as the defendants in the suit.
Efforts to reach Education Department officials and Assistant Attorney General Colleen Galligan, who was representing the department, were unavailing.
Lederman said it was hard to believe the state would so vehemently deny that there was an issue with its teacher evaluation system.
“We are incredulous that with all this evidence, the state of New York chose to fight us to the bitter end,” he said. “They never would admit that this was a mistake and instead fought us, which put us in a legal battle.”
In the decision, McDonough said the state failed to explain why Sheri Lederman’s growth score drastically changed from a 14 out of 20 to a one out of 20.
He also said the current evaluation system places teacher in one of four possible categories using “pre-determined percentages regardless of whether the performance of students dramatically rose or dramatically fell from the previous year.”
Lederman said the court’s ruling could influence a change in the teacher evaluation system.
“We believe this will, or at least should, cause politicians who have been pushing this to rethink and possibly reconsider what they’ve done,” he said. “Specifically, we really hope the governor of the state of New York, who less than a year ago was pushing this model very hard and commenting that he intends to ‘jar’ teachers, reconsider the rhetoric.”
