Houston ISD's EVAAS Teacher Scores — a Court Finds Teachers Had No Meaningful Way to Check an Algorithm's Verdict

From 2012 Houston Independent School District (more than 215,000 students, 283 schools) used EVAAS, a proprietary value-added model from SAS Institute, to rate teachers, and set a goal of dismissing 85 percent of teachers rated ineffective. SAS treated the algorithm as a trade secret, so neither the district nor teachers could replicate a score to check it.
The Houston Federation of Teachers and teachers sued in 2014. On 4 May 2017 U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith dismissed the substantive due-process claims, finding the union could not show the system was unconstitutionally vague or lacked a rational link to the district's goals, but let the procedural due-process claim proceed. The union's release quotes the amended opinion: HISD teachers had 'no meaningful way to ensure correct calculation of their EVAAS scores.' The judge wrote that 'algorithms are human creations, and subject to error like any other human endeavor.' HISD had ended its SAS contract in 2016, but the court held that did not moot the case.
In October 2017 the district settled. It agreed not to use value-added scores to terminate a teacher while the teacher cannot independently test or challenge the score, to restrict its use of value-added measures, to set up an instructional consultation panel on appraisal, and to pay $237,000 in legal fees. The union's president said the settlement effectively ends value-added dismissals in Houston because no contractor could meet the due-process standard the court set.
What it shows: this is a cautionary, legally tested case rather than a success story. No measured improvement in teaching or public value is documented in the sources; the lesson is that high-stakes public decisions based on a score that affected people cannot reproduce or contest are open to challenge. Evidence comes from the court reporting and the union's release, so the plaintiffs' framing should be read with that in mind.

Read the full analysis: https://www.courthousenews.com/houston-schools-must-face-teacher-evaluation-lawsuit/