Arizona teacher sues state alleging retaliation for criticizing Common Core

Brad McQueen is a veteran elementary school teacher in the Tanque Verde School District in Arizona. He is suing  John Huppenthal, Arizona’s outgoing superintendent of public instruction, alleging that he was the victim of retaliation by his employer after he spoke out against the Common Core State Standards and a Core-aligned testing consortium, called PARCC.
Arizona has been implementing the Common Core standards for years, though in the state they are known as Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards. Huppenthal, a Core supporter, was defeated last August in a Republican primary by Diane Douglas, a Core opponent and former school board member, who last month was elected as the state’s new schools superintendent. Already there is a campaign by Core supporters to drum enough votes on a petition to try to recall Douglas next year. The governor-elect, Doug Ducey, who takes office in January, also opposes the Core.
When asked for comment on the suit, Sally Stewart, public information officer for the state Education Department, said in an e-mail: “The Arizona Department of Education does not comment on lawsuits.”


McQueen’s team said it had obtained some e-mails sent among some people working for Huppenthal, three of whom select teachers from the district to serve on various committees. The suit notes that some of the panels “were facilitated through Pearson Education, a third-party education company” that “pays teachers for their work on certain committees.”


During the summer of 2012, the suit says, McQueen earned $1,105 working for the Arizona Department of Education on a committee about the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment, known as AZELLA. He also earned $985 in the summer of 2013 also working on AZELLA committees, according to the suit. On Feb 22, 2014, the Arizona Daily Independent published an article written by McQueen that was critical of the Common Core State Standards being implemented in the state. Four days later, McQueen was on a radio show during which he also criticized the standards and the PARCC, an exam created by a multistate consortium called the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers,, one of two federally funded multistate groups designing new Core-aligned exams.


A few days later, several department employees had an e-mail discussion about McQueen’s anti-Core comments. One of the March 3 e-mails cited in the lawsuit says:

“RE: March 18-21 Arizona State Educator Reviewers” that stated “Given that Brad McQueen gave a negative statement to the press about Common Core and assessment, you may want to remove him from the invitation list. Just a heads up. This was such a surprise for Arizona as Brad has been on many committees, both for our state assessment as well as involved with Common Core and formative assessment based on CC for our state.”

There were a similar e-mails, and McBride was removed from the invitation list, the suit alleges, noting that he “received no invitation in April asking him to participate on any teacher committee since his public opposition to the Common Core.” The suit says that McBride has the right to say what he wants about the Core without having it affect his role on a panel for which, he says, he is qualified.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/12/02/arizona-teacher-sues-state-alleging-retaliation-for-criticizing-common-core/