Incident 96: Houston Schools Must Face Teacher Evaluation Lawsuit

Description: On May 4, 2017, a U.S. federal judge advanced teachers’ claims that the Houston Independent School District’s algorithmic teacher evaluations violated their due process rights to their jobs by not allowing them to review the grounds of their termination.

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Alleged: SAS Institute developed an AI system deployed by Houston Independent School District, which harmed Houston Independent School District teachers.

Incident Stats

Incident ID

Report Count

Incident Date

2017-05-08

Editors

Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam

CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

On May 4, 2017, a U.S. federal judge advanced teachers’ claims that the Houston Independent School District’s use of algorithmic teacher evaluations violated their due process rights to their jobs. The Houston ISD contracted with SAS Institute in 2011 to use their Educational Value-Added Assessment System to evaluate teacher performance. SAS does not allow teachers to review the calculations made by their proprietary algorithms, which, in the opinion of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, violates the teachers’ right to independently review the cause of their termination. Houston ISD ended its contract with SAS in 2016.

Short Description

On May 4, 2017, a U.S. federal judge advanced teachers’ claims that the Houston Independent School District’s algorithmic teacher evaluations violated their due process rights to their jobs by not allowing them to review the grounds of their termination.

Severity

Moderate

Harm Type

Harm to civil liberties

AI System Description

SAS Institute's Educational Value-Added Assessment System, which is designed to evaluate teacher performance based on student test performance.

System Developer

SAS Institute

Sector of Deployment

Education

Relevant AI functions

Cognition

AI Techniques

machine learning

AI Applications

data analytics, decision support

Location

Houston, TX

Named Entities

Houston Independent School District, SAS Institute, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Houston Federation of Teachers Local 2415, Andy Dewey

Technology Purveyor

Houston Independent School District, SAS Institute

Beginning Date

2011-01-01

Ending Date

2016-01-01

Near Miss

Harm caused

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

Laws Implicated

US Constitution Fourteenth Amendment

Data Inputs

test grades

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Houston Schools Must Face Teacher Evaluation Lawsuit

courthousenews.com

courthousenews.com · 2017

HOUSTON (CN) – A proprietary system that measures teacher performance based on student test scores may violate teachers’ civil rights because they can’t verify the results are accurate, a federal judge ruled, advancing a lawsuit against Tex…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.