Performance Measures for Teachers and Teacher Education: Corporate Education Reform Opens the Door to New Legal Issues

Authors

  • Diana Pullin Professor of Education Law and Public Policy Lynch School of Education and the School of Law Boston College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1980

Keywords:

Legal issues, corporate education reform, accountability, teacher education, teacher evaluation, teacher licensure, value added models (VAM), privacy, civil rights

Abstract

Recent efforts to change the teaching profession and teacher preparation include a number of innovations to use portfolio assessment, value added measures (VAM), accountability metrics and other corporate education reform ideas.  These approaches may provoke considerable potential legal consequences. Traditional constitutional and civil rights issues will continue to be important considerations. In addition, because education is increasingly seen as a consumer product, new types of legal issues are arising from the way evidence about performance is gathered and used and about the privacy of data. Legal claims more familiar to a business context are being asserted and can be expected to increase. Whistle-blower claims concerning fraud in government-funded programs have been filed, as well as claims of breach of contract and defective products. Finally, criminal prosecutions are being utilized to address systemic cheating in evaluation systems.

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Author Biography

Diana Pullin, Professor of Education Law and Public Policy Lynch School of Education and the School of Law Boston College

The focus of Dr. Pullin’s work is the impact of law on education practice and the impact of social science on the law. She is former Dean of Education at Boston College. She has served as legal counsel for students, educators, and school systems in many different types of education disputes, particularly over high stakes uses of testing. She has published numerous books, chapters, and articles on education law and public policy, educational and employment testing, educator quality, and individuals with disabilities.  Professional standards of practice have also been a focus of her work; she is one of the co-authors of the 1999 Standards on Educational and Psychological Testing and she served as well for a number of years as a member of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, is a Lifetime National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences and is Associate Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Educational Policy.

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Published

2015-08-31

How to Cite

Pullin, D. (2015). Performance Measures for Teachers and Teacher Education: Corporate Education Reform Opens the Door to New Legal Issues. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23, 81. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1980

Issue

Vol. 23 (2015)

Section

Articles