A New Mexico judge has halted the use of the state’s teacher evaluation system to administer sanctions or rewards after finding it be ineffective and in-turn harmful to the students it serves.

For the time being, the judge’s decision will mean that "teachers cannot lose their licenses for low ratings, and nor can they receive merit wage increases for high ratings,” said The Washington Post.

The injunction will be held in place until Judge David K. Thomson can hear the full case against the evaluation system, brought to the court by the American Federation of Teachers.

Though the judge does not disagree in theory with the value-added models that the state’s evaluation system relies on, he said that the state-specific program is "riddled with data errors, a lack of transparency and other problems, he wrote,” according to The Post.

A spokesperson for the state’s Education Department told The Post that the suit is a “simply a legal PR stunt by the labor unions,” but state officials had noticed problems with the implementation of the evaluation system prior to legal interference.

Before the case, “state officials had already voluntarily decided to delay the most severe sanctions, such as stripping a teacher’s license, because of concerns about problems with implementation of the new system.”

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Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

12/4/2015