Valerie Strauss covers the case of Sheri Lederman in her Washington Post blog:
…Sheri Lederman, the beloved fourth-grade teacher from Great Neck, New York, was victorious in her battle to have her 2013-14 VAM [Value-added Modeling] score of ‘ineffective’ rating vacated and set aside by the Supreme Court of New York State. Justice Roger D. McDonough, who heard the case, recognized that score for what it was — ‘arbitrary’ and ‘capricious.’
Answer Sheet readers will remember that her husband argued the irrationality of VAM scores before the court in August of 2015, laying out a careful, systematic argument that you can read about here. During the trial, Bruce Lederman, Sheri’s lawyer and husband, described the production of the score as a ‘black box’ system that spit out predictions comparing his wife’s students to ‘avatar students.’ He noted that ‘the magic of numbers brings a suspension of common sense.’
In his ruling, McDonough cited affidavits submitted by Linda Darling Hammond of Stanford University, Aaron Pallas of Columbia University, Audrey Amrien-Beardsley of Arizona State University, Sean Corcoran of New York University, Jesse Rothstein of University of California at Berkeley, clinical school psychologist Brad Lindell, and me. Each of us used research and data to demonstrate that the VAM system was indeed arbitrary and capricious, and therefore an abuse of discretion by the New York State Education Department. In his ruling, the judge characterized that evidence as ‘overwhelming.’