We, the undersigned parents, educators and community members, support the Tennessee Education Association’s legal action to end the use of imprecise, volatile statistical estimates from the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System to evaluate Tennessee teachers.

The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of using TVAAS in teacher evaluation for educators who do not teach in a tested grade or subject. The claims include the violation of Tennessee educators’ due process and equal protection rights granted under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit asks the courts to stop the continued high-stakes use of TVAAS estimates for teachers of non-tested grades and subjects.

Furthermore, we support TEA’s legislative effort to hold all Tennessee educators harmless from the use of TVAAS estimates in teacher evaluations for two years as the state transitions to a new state standardized test.

TVAAS results are statistical estimates, often with large standard errors. Research such as The Strategic Data Project of Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research indicates these imprecise value-added measures are not appropriate for evaluating individual teachers.

It is time for the state to end its over-reliance on the flawed statistical estimates in TVAAS to make high-stakes decisions that impact Tennessee students and teachers.

Our students and teachers are more than a score.