{"id":1647,"date":"2009-06-01T17:58:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T21:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1647"},"modified":"2009-06-01T17:58:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T21:58:05","slug":"the-procrustean-bed-of-teacher-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1647","title":{"rendered":"The Procrustean bed of teacher tests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edexcellence.net\/flypaper\/index.php\/2009\/06\/what-would-sotomayor-say\/\">Mike Petrilli&#8217;s stab at the Sonia Sotomayor nomination<\/a> via the Massachusetts teacher tests is a little askew, and I&#8217;m surprised he didn&#8217;t look at an obvious dilemma that&#8217;s deeper than the politics of a judicial nomination. Several <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/massachusetts\/articles\/2009\/05\/15\/ex_teachers_sue_over_licensing_exam\/?s_campaign=8315\">former teachers have sued the state<\/a> (and Pearson) for what they claim is a discriminatory impact of teacher tests given the disproportionate failure rate of minority teachers. This is the employee side of impact-analysis law that most school lawyers probably know better under the graduation-exam cases in Florida and Texas. <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The landmark case here is <i>Debra P. v. Turlington<\/i>, which led<br \/>\nto a number of federal decisions that guide the use of tests that have<br \/>\ndisparate impact in schools. To wit, tests with disparate impact by<br \/>\nprotected classes are acceptable if&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is a rational state purpose for imposing them (guarantee graduate skills, in the <i>Debra P.<\/i> case)<\/li>\n<li>There is sufficient notice to those affected<\/li>\n<li>Those<br \/>\naffected have a reasonable opportunity to learn the material on the<br \/>\ntest (the key reason for delaying graduation test applications in<br \/>\nFlorida, where federal judges did not want to hold the victims of<br \/>\nsegregation responsible for the unconstitutional behavior of schools)<\/li>\n<li>The<br \/>\napplication of the test is professionally done (I&#8217;m bundling together<br \/>\nseveral separate issues, including the composition of the test,<br \/>\ndefensible setting of cut scores, multiple opportunities to retake the<br \/>\ntests, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>There is no better way to meet the state&#8217;s purpose that also reduces the disparate impact. \n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the employment context, Petrilli is probably correct that<br \/>\nthe translation of the first item is essentially whether the test is a<br \/>\nreasonable proxy for necessary teacher qualifications. But there is<br \/>\nalmost no way for anyone engaged in the current debate over teacher<br \/>\nqualifications can defend these tests or defend the teachers&#8217; lawsuit<br \/>\nwithout having some fairly severe inconsistencies.<\/p>\n<p>Consider first the folks who have the approach that we should not<br \/>\ncare who enters teaching as long as we measure student achievement and<br \/>\nmake personnel decisions as a result. Several (whom I will not name to<br \/>\nprotect the guilty) have accused the High Quality Teacher standards in<br \/>\nNCLB of obsessing about inputs (i.e., what teachers know) in contrast<br \/>\nto outputs (what students learn). Anyone in this camp should abhor the<br \/>\nMassachusetts teacher tests (and all teacher tests) because they continue<br \/>\nthe &#8220;let&#8217;s look at the teacher qualifications absent the kids&#8221;<br \/>\napproach, and we should be moving away from proxies for teacher<br \/>\neffectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>But the lawyers for the teachers and their supporters are not in much better shape, logic-wise. It is going to be very difficult to knock the legs out from the state&#8217;s teacher testing<br \/>\nprogram. They have to argue that the tests are a poor proxy for teacher<br \/>\nskill, or that the tests were poorly constructed, or that there is a<br \/>\nbetter option with a reduced disparate impact. If they cannot convince a judge that the tests were constructed and administered unprofessionally, the lawyers are going to be in the uncomfortable spot of arguing that the testing is an inferior proxy for judging teacher quality, in contrast to &#8230; [The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.] <\/p>\n<p>Summary: If you are in favor of judging teachers by student learning, then content-testing knowledge is a poor proxy by your own arguments. If you are against the content-based testing, then you have to come up with a better standard that will hold up in court. No, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a way out of this for anyone with skin in the game, but if there is no summary dismissal and no evidence of rank incompetence in test construction, the fireworks will be interesting to watch. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Petrilli&#8217;s stab at the Sonia Sotomayor nomination via the Massachusetts teacher tests is a little askew, and I&#8217;m surprised he didn&#8217;t look at an obvious dilemma that&#8217;s deeper than the politics of a judicial nomination. Several former teachers have sued the state (and Pearson) for what they claim is a discriminatory impact of teacher [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability-frankenstein","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-qz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}