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LAUSD Withholds Teacher Names from Evaluation Scores
The district says releasing names could cause jealousy among peers, weaken school morale and result in parents demanding teachers with high ratings.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has calculated confidential “academic growth over time” ratings that judge the effectiveness in raising student performance for about 12,000 math and English teachers last year. Though the district will not release the names of teachers and their scores, writes Jason Song at the LA Times.
By analyzing student’s performance on several years of standardized tests and estimate a teacher’s role in raising or lowering student achievement, the scores are equated. The district has issued new scores this fall to about 14,000 instructors and their principals.
The system has been echoed across the country, with school districts throughout the country have been adopting similar approaches. These have been labeled as “value-added ratings”, and has become a popular measure of teacher effectiveness.
The Times published a series of articles last summer based on value-added analysis, and since, L.A. Unified began calculating scores for teachers. And while the Times have published their scores, the district is less keen to do so.
“The potential harm to privacy interests from disclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure,” said David Holmquist, the district’s general counsel, in a letter to The Times.
Holmquist cited that it could cause jealousy among teachers and lead to poor school morale. Public release of the sensitive figures could further harm teachers’ ability to get future jobs and that parents could demand instructors with high ratings, leading to unbalanced classrooms.
But after publishing their own, the newspaper filed a California Public Records Act request for the district’s own results. Kelli Sager, an attorney representing The Times, said:
“At this point, we have not received any records from LAUSD, so it is unclear what they are saying they will provide. We have ample authority that supports The Times’ request for documents, and if LAUSD refuses to provide them, we will have no choice but to seek a court order requiring them to do so.”
L.A. Unified has agreed, in principle, to release the scores — but without teachers’ names.
L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy wants to include the ratings as one component in teachers’ confidential evaluations. But United Teachers Los Angeles has steadfastly opposed using test scores to rate teachers effectiveness.
Friday
November 25th, 2011
Filed Under
California Education LAUSD Los Angeles Schools Teacher Evaluations Value-Added Evaluations
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Comments
From Roque Burio Jr the lemon who can dance and sing:
Here is my questioning song for Holmquist the counsel general of LAUSD: Mr. Holmquist, Mr. Holmquist from what authority, jurisprudence, or law could you cite that private interest of a teacher serving in public education outweigh the public interest of public school students? Or is it not that it is the vice versa of your claim? The school students need teachers of high performance and effectiveness which can only be reflected on the high performance and progress of their students. What measures can you suggest to evaluate the performance of students and the teachers other than the annual test scores of students?
From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance and sing, here is my song for LAUSD: LAUSD never had any objective way of evaluating teachers. It has been using very subjective, biased, erroneous and false evaluations to fail targeted old veteran teachers to cover up its financial and academic failures. It has no plan to improve its performance. It has no clear plan to fairly, honestly, truthfully and objectively evaluate teachers. It therefore deserves to be dismantled and transformed into city schools and /or private schools so the students can succeed.
From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance and sing. Here is my song for Mr. Deasy and Mr. Holmquist: I can show the two of you a research proposal designed to show the correlations of the test scores of students of a particular teacher with the performance and affectivity of that teacher. I know many of your math teachers can also do it—but the problem is why you do not want to correlate the test scores of students with their teacher’s performance. The research design that I will explain to you is very simple and cannot be negated by anyone. It will not take you an hour to understand it.
om Roque Burio Jr. the ugly duckling and the branded lemon who can dance but can also sing; Here is my revealing song about the spoiled kids: The LAUSD and particularly its superintendent Mr. Deasy and General Counsel Holmquist are like some kind of spoiled kids who could not understand the difficult economic situation they are in and would sue in Superior Court their daddy the State of California that can no longer afford their extravagant and unexplained shuffling of students residing in the valley to special schools in the city of LA , and those students residing in the city of LA are shuffled to the valley special schools to justify their unquenchable thirst for more money allowance.
I think the Court should ask these spoiled kids why they shuffled students to special schools in distant places outside their residence. Daddy Brown should teach these kids some discipline in extravagant spending of tax payers’ money. Daddy Brown should spank their… you know what!
From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance but can also sing ,here is another song for LAUSD Deasy and his partner UTLA Warren Fletcher on their latest dance step to pretend to uphold the law and the ruling of the Court enunciated by Judge James Chalfant that student test scores must be used to evaluate teachers. These long partners in crime of violating the Stull law have just made seemingly solemn promises to uphold the law but may really be preparing a joint proposal that may be circumventing the same law.
Parent, students, and teachers must remain vigilant on how the paper monster LAUSD and its puppet partner UTLA will again go around the law on teachers’ evaluation.
By the way the new ruling of the Court on teacher evaluations correlated with students’ test scores will definitely evolve toward standardized curricula, teaching and learning techniques for all teachers and students. And furthermore, the emphasis on test scores will also lead to the proper placement and specialization of students in their pursuit of education and careers and that will properly fit them in our free enterprise society.
Long live Democracy, long live justice, long live equality, long live students and teachers and parents, and down with the paper monster and its puppet partner.
From Roque burio Jr., the lemon who can dance but can also sing. Here is the rumorous song for the Hypocrite and tyrant paper monster: Deasy and Holmquist accidentally unearthed and forwarded to the Commission the top secret misconduct of sexual assault by a top br ass official of this financially and academically failing school district against a nonconsenting fellow man and subordinate. It is like the stories of the Fall of the Roman Empire and also of the Fall of Sodom and Gomorra. Hah, hah, and more hah, hah, Hypocrites.
Is it true that some good politicians are secretly planning to close this shameful empire of paper monster? Why not ask the Senate and the Assembly people? Long live justice, long live democracy, long live free enterprise, long live privatization, long live students, teachers and parents and down with the tyrant paper monster.
An Open Letter for Mr. Deasy and Mr. Holmquist.
From Roque Burio, Jr, the lemon who can dance but can also sing. Here is the counter challenge song for you Holmquist who has challenged me about two or three years ago that you want to see me in Court with all of your lawyers to settle once and for all that your mother company LAUSD has been right in accusing and charging me of about one hundred misconducts. Mr. Holmquist and Mr. Deasy do not hesitate to send all of those allegations of Mrs. Ekchian to the Commission and let us see if you could really prove that LAUSD and Mrs. Ekchian had been right.
I called the Commission on Teacher 1Credentialing a few days ago and I was told that neither of you has ever sent anything else except the notice of my separation from your dismayingly failing school district and with my name and the settlement agreement that I signed that I would not sue the LAUSD and its employees, particularly those administrators and those newly migrated teachers for falsely accusing me – in– that settlement agreement in exchange for money that I badly needed at that time. At our initial encounter, I think I won already in at that stage. There might really be misconducts and probably you could win this time considering that the lawyer whom I was about to hire ran away like a rat, as your lawyers said. He confessed to me that the LAUSD wanted me to be left alone on my own defense but you offered me settlement instead; hence, this time no settlement anymore and I will be alone. Okay?
Come on Holmquist; are you so scared to find the truth that you are part of the conspiracy that falsely accused me and other old and veteran and innocent teachers? Are you scared that my case may go to the Supreme Court? And the Court will find that you as an officer of the Court being a lawyer may have been obstructing justice and even unethically conniving with those evil and maniacal minds to commit injustice against me and other teachers? You know very well that you have no evidence against me and yet you let Mrs. Ekchian to file those cases.
As officer of the Court you must have protected us and the rule of law. I think your only option now is to resign and retire Holmquist—that will be very acceptable to me.
Again, I emphatically reiterate to you Holmquist to expedite the hearing of those misconducts as alleged by Ekchian and others against me. Come on, prove those Ekchian allegations against me, and come on prove them, prove them, once and for all Holmquist. And if you cannot, then, let justice prevail.
The voters will never give funding to LAUSD if you cannot prove those several hundreds of allegations of misconducts against me and other teachers. November election is fast approaching Mr. Deasy and Holmquist. It seems to me that the voters no longer believe in the LAUSD anymore. It seems to me that you will lose in the November election. Long live liberty and justice for all. Long live city schools and private schools, and down with the tyrant paper monster.
Do not worry Mr. Deasy and Holmquist, if I win in the Commission as before—remember a long time ago? You can still appeal to the Superior Court on many of the legal issues that I might raise against your district. Now you must be becoming really interested to meet with me even in a quasi judicial body—I mean your proposed Educational Reform Law has no teeth without case laws. Mr. Warren Fletcher of UTLA the puppet partner was defeated in the students’ test scores in correlation with teachers’ performances.
See you in the Commission with your complaints of misconducts. Please give me a day or two in that Commission, just to show you that your complaints are false and fabricated false statements of facts. Are you doing your homework Holmquist to convince me and the Commission that I might have committed misconducts? He, he, he, and more he, he, he. Smile Mr. Deasy and Holmquist. See you soon.
From Roque Burio Jr. the lemons who can dance and can also sing. Here is my song on the impending and inevitable reformation or revolution. Bring to justice and incarcerate corrupt officials of LAUSD and UTLA. Recall is not sufficient justice. Freeze and confiscate of their looted assets will satisfy the peoples, citizens, and taxpayers. Put them in jail because their corruptions weaken and destroy our government and public education. Long live the peoples, workers, students, parents, and teachers. Long live the US flag and the Republic and down with the evils of corrupt government officials and their cronies. He, he, he, he, and more he, he, he. Long live and congratulations to you members of the Recall Movement.