A Toledo Public Schools teacher who had planned to challenge her firing has instead chosen to resign.

Beth Harpster’s disciplinary case raised novel issues for TPS. The second-grade teacher at Longfellow Elementary was charged with “gross inefficiencies in the classroom” and was placed on paid suspension June 25. District officials relied heavily on student test data to prove their case.

She had elected to have a third-party referee hear her case, and a Toledo Board of Education human resources committee hearing last week included the appointment of a referee in her case as an agenda item. However, the committee meeting’s agenda includes her name on a list of staff resignations, and a TPS spokesman confirmed that Ms. Harpster had resigned instead of fighting her termination.

Toledo Federation of Teachers President Kevin Dalton said the union had no comment on the teacher’s decision. Calls to Ms. Harpster were unanswered.

While Ms. Harpster had a history of poor evaluations and had been placed in an intervention program three times, her termination case was unusual.

While the district’s case didn’t rest solely on student performance, its use of test data in such a way was likely unprecedented, district leaders and union officials said.

Using internal data, TPS argued that Ms. Harpster’s students showed significantly less growth in reading and math during the year than students in the other classes. The district also claimed that nearly half of students in third grade who had Ms. Harpster the year before needed “Reading Improvement Monitoring Plans,” a much higher rate than students who had other teachers.

Despite her students’ struggles, none was retained in the last two years. Instead, TPS documents claim, her students are passed on to the third grade, where they struggle. Ms. Harpster was rated as “ineffective” on the state’s new teacher evaluation system, which includes, for the first time, student test data.

— Nolan Rosenkrans

First Published December 15, 2014, 5:00 a.m.