Teacher ‘effectiveness’ is the topic of what has become a very controversial article in the August 14 issue of the Los Angeles Times. Seven years worth of math and English data was obtained and analyzed from Los Angeles Unified School District using a statistical approach called ‘value added analysis’ which rates teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student’s performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors.

The LA Times analysis includes a teacher data ‘lookup’ where teachers can find their value added score and comment on it. Data includes performance on more than 6,000 third to fifth grade teachers for whom reliable data was available.

Though controversial among teachers and others, the method has been increasingly embraced by education leaders and policymakers across the country, including the Obama administration.

“You’re leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test,” said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which has more than 40,000 members.

Among the findings:

• Highly effective teachers routinely propel students from below grade level to advanced in a single year.
• Contrary to popular belief, the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas.
• Parents obsess about picking the right school for their child, but it matters far more which teacher the child gets.
• Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers’ effectiveness were not. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students’ performance.

Today the United Teachers of Los Angeles announced a massive boycott of the LA Times for what they are calling a flawed article. Flaws include:

• Value-Added Models exacerbate the overreliance on standardized test scores.
• Value-Added Models rest on a faulty premise—that high-stakes standardized student test scores can measure a teacher’s effectiveness.
• VAM is another example of a “quick fix” that some policymakers embrace instead of doing the harder work of pursuing long-term solutions for public education.

“Ms. Caruso was an amazing teacher,” said Rita Gasparetti, whose daughter was in Caruso’s class a few years ago. “She really worked with Clara, socially and academically.”

Still, Caruso said the numbers were important and, like several other teachers interviewed, wondered why she hadn’t been shown such data before by anyone in the district.

“For better or worse,” she said, “testing and teacher effectiveness are going to be linked.… If my student test scores show I’m an ineffective teacher, I’d like to know what contributes to it. What do I need to do to bring my average up?”

Until now access to the VAM data has not been available. In what appears to be a long and incendiary discussion of the effectiveness of schools, teachers, and education as a whole, the value added model is another interesting component of an increasingly complex conversation.

For the full article click here.

Have you read the article? What do you think?

One Response to “L.A. Times: Who’s Teaching L.A.’s Kids?”

1. California GEAR UP blog » Education News Roundup says:

   October 17, 2010 at 7:49 pm

   [...] L.A. Times Education: A news blog operated by the LA Times that features local happenings and the political pulse of education in the southland. Particularly interesting during times of controversy, such as when the newspaper released testing data on more than 6,000 third to fifth grade teachers. [...]