The analysis was based on  scores in grades two through five in most of the Districts 500 elementary schools.

According to the Times, “This approach generally doesn’t penalize schools for things beyond their control — students’ poverty, English-language ability, previous achievement or other factors commonly used to explain schools’ success or failure. That’s because each student’s progress is measured against his or her own past performance, not that of other children.”

It does not matter that the critics site many problems in this value added approach. And the study certainly isn’t advocating that it is reliable enough to evaluate individual teachers. What is important is that this study is poking unions, teachers and administrators with the fact that standardized state testing data might be a way to evaluate student growth and thus teacher effectiveness.  Helen Ladd of Duke University is reported as saying that current testing appears to be“…Measuring who is in schools rather than how effective the schools are.”

Value-added results have many critics who cite among other things,  a lack of enough data as only English and math scores are used. It also raises the question of how the information is used. For example, the Times is going to publish the names and rankings of 6000 teachers. Is that right? Should data be used to evaluate teachers versus schools? Of course, parents are going to want to know what they are getting for their money, too.

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy called for a boycott of the LA Times and also said that he was willing to look into a new evaluation system. He did not say what it would be based on while a spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, told Board of Education members he wanted to meet with the union about the value-added analysis.

The Los Angeles and California teacher unions have circulated a letter that  attacks the Times’ methods and it is signed by the State’s union leadership. As far as I know the general membership was not given a chance to provide input pro or con, however, there was a meeting at a resort in Indio where this matter was discussed. Publishing teacher data may  even go to the courts. Imagine if the same issue was applied to doctors receiving tax money (Medicare) for their practices and having their ratings published in a newspaper?

And there is also the issue of what life is going to be like in the staff room when some teachers are identified as “better” in the newspaper. What is the principal going to say? Well administrators try to entice high performing teachers to their schools? What happens to low performing teachers when there isn’t any staff development funds to help them?  There is also the issues about what happens to

non-tested classes such as art, music, social studies, and science? Is a well rounded education important any longer?

Make no mistake, this study published in the Los Angeles Times holds all the ingredients to create a paradigm shift in the way that teachers may be evaluated in the future as it yields an “objective” number based on student test results.

I would recommend teachers outside of Los Angeles get their eyes on this work because there really isn’t any reason every district in the land wont’ be considering it as long as there is the data for it to justified.

Hold on teachers, this is going to be interesting and there can be little doubt that your students’ test numbers best be up.

The Secretary of Education has backed the publication of data

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/16/local/la-me-0817-teachers-react-20100817

Highlights of article

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/14/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815

Union rebuttal letter.

http://www.utla.net/system/files/NEA_CTA_UTLA_Letter_LA_Times_20100820.pdf

NEA article questioning methods

http://neatoday.org/2010/08/20/critics-point-to-flaws-with-los-angeles-times-teacher-database/

http://www.utla.net/system/files/NEA_CTA_UTLA_Letter_LA_Times_20100820.pdf