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Tennessee's National Impact On Teacher Evaluation Law & Policy: An Assessment Of Value-Added Model Litigation, Mark A. Paige, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Kevin Close

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Over the last decade or so, federal and state education policymakers embraced the use of value added models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers’ performance and make high-stakes employment decisions (e.g., tenure, merit pay, termination of employment). VAMs are complicated statistical models that attempt to estimate a teacher’s contribution to student test scores, particularly those in mathematics and reading. Educational researchers, as well as many teachers and unions, however, have objected to the use of VAMs noting that these models fail to adequately account for variables outside of teachers’ control that contribute to a student’s education performance. Subsequently, many teachers challenged the …

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Pleading Guilty: Indigent Defendant Perceptions Of The Plea Process, Jeanette Hussemann, Jonah Siegel

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Public defenders and other court actors most often engage in behind-the-scene plea negotiating to manage overwhelming workloads and to dispose of cases as quickly and efficiently as possible. In prior work, scholars have documented an increased reliance on plea bargaining and the deleterious impact of the practice on the legal process and the rights of individuals accused of a crime; however, this research has not systematically analyzed the decisions made, and the perspectives of justice of society’s most disadvantaged and arguably most important actors of the court, the defendants. Relying on data collected in a Midwestern public defense system, this …

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Teaching To The Test: Determining The Appropriate Test For First Amendment Challenges To "No Promo Homo" Education Policies, Kameron Dawson

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Under the current tests set out in Pickering and its progeny, teachers—particularly LGBT and LGBT allies— are being censored in the classroom with “no promo homo” education policies and laws. Although citizens are granted free speech protections through the First Amendment, public employees such as public school teachers generally receive less protection. The Supreme Court has yet to determine a distinct test for public school teachers, leaving discretion to school districts. Currently, in seven states, legislators explicitly prohibit teachers from positively speaking about or correcting misconceptions on homosexuality. In this current age, these policies negatively impact the teacher’s effectiveness inside …

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