No. Petitioner, a teacher at a transfer school was rated developing for 2013-14 and 2014-15 and ineffective for 2015-16. After a hearing pursuant to Education Law Section 3020-a the hearing officer found that the teacher “was unable to implement recommendations or otherwise improve his pedagogy” and that “there is no likelihood that further remediation efforts would improve the [petitioner’s] competency.”
Petitioner argued that the hearing officer’s findings were not supported by the evidence adduced at the hearing. He claimed that observations were not returned on time for him to implement suggested changes, that there was a vendetta against him (to which fellow teachers testified on his behalf) and that the nature of his school, a transfer school for students who had been given a second chance to graduate high school after leaving other high schools made the termination decision improper.
The Court upheld the termination finding that its powers to reverse the determination were severely limited. The judge wrote “the Court can only determine whether the Hearing Officer’s decision was arbitrary or capricious and whether the penalty shocks a sense of fairness. The Court cannot conduct a fact-finding hearing to evaluate witness credibility or to assess, as raised before the Hearing Officer here, whether administrators are simply firing experienced teachers in order to replace them with younger (and cheaper) instructors. Those are determinations to be made by the Hearing Officer. Petitioner was provided with an opportunity to contest his evaluations and to offer theories regarding why his administrators should not be viewed as credible.”
EdLawFaqs 
Reasonable boiler plate argument by Court yet seems like a template copy/paste name
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
Not exactly. You are right there are many opinions that look like boilerplates. This case was included due to the argument by petitioner about the principal’s vendetta; an argument I’ve heard but not seen in a 3020-a appeal.