Union Boycotts LA Times Over Teacher Evaluation Disclosure

Atypical Geek writes "According to Newsweek, the local teachers union is infuriated over the disclosure of teacher performance metrics. Quoting: 'Do parents have the right to know which of their kids' teachers are the most and least effective? That's the controversy roaring in California this week with the publication of an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times's Jason Song and Jason Felch, who used seven years of math and English test data to publicly identify the best and the worst third- to fifth-grade teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The newspaper's announcement of its plans to release data later this month on all 6,000 of the city's elementary-school teachers has prompted the local teachers' union to rally members to organize a boycott of the newspaper.' According to the linked Times article, United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy said the database was 'an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning.'"

Comments

Re:Educational Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

To compete with wikileaks, they must become wikileaks. Things are looking up for the media. Amazing - maybe now they'll have to do their jobs and report on the government with brutal facts, instead of placating the party line.

Depends who you thnk teachers work for

[petes_PoV]

In most places the whole educational establishment is there for the comfort and convenience of the teachers. Any learning that takes place is purely a side-effect of employing teachers, but it's certainly not the reason why they are employed. (Which is why teachers are so vehemently opposed to testing children and assessing how much they know - since this reflects directly on them, not the kids).

It would be nice to hope that this was the first step in recognising that (indirectly) real people pay for and therefore employ teachers. These real people would like to think the primary role of teachers is to impart knowledge, skills and abilities to the children in their charge. If this article leads parents to question schools about why they are employing sub-standard teachers, then it can only be a good thing, that should be extended everywhere.

Yes, this ranking is a good one

[dlenmn]

This comparison is particularly useful because it tracks students over time so that the effect of a teacher can be separated from other preexisting conditions (like poverty). This graphic from the LA times really says it all. The image shows how on teacher greatly improves the standing of students in his class, while the other does the exact opposite. This ranking has merit.

Re:like any other job?

[Stradivarius]

The original LA Times article on the web did have a prominently placed solicitation for teachers to submit their comments on their score. Not sure what the plans for the dead tree edition were

It also seems to me that the teachers' side of the story was printed:

Many teachers and union leaders are skeptical of the value-added approach, saying standardized tests are flawed and do not capture the more intangible benefits of good instruction. Some also fear teachers will be fired based on the arcane calculations of statisticians who have never worked in a classroom.

Whether you buy their arguments or not, the teachers' official point of view has been spelled out for the Times' readers.

I for one don't buy it. Certainly care needs to be taken with designing any evaluations of job effectiveness. The value-added approach tries to take such care. The union response was just the standard line that you cannot and should not evaluate them by standardized tests that would let you compare them against each other. And similarly disappointing rhetoric implying that only teachers can evaluate teacher effectiveness - as if mere mortals like parents or statisticians have no insight. You don't need to be a master chef to know whether the food was prepared by one, and you don't need to be a teacher to know whether a teachers's students are learning.

Re:RTFA before commenting

[Idiomatick]

"On average, his students started the year in the 34th percentile in math compared with all other district fifth-graders. They finished in the 61st. "

Didn't catch this quote earlier but it invalidates point 1,2.

Re:Educational Problems

[demonlapin]

Should it be illegal for cartels to set commodity prices?

That is illegal; there's a reason OPEC meetings aren't held in New York, and that LCD makers were fined for collusion (like here; that's from 2008, or here, for the new suit by the state of New York)

It's amazing how free market purists suddenly don't trust the free market when it comes to workers' pay.

I'm not aware of any "free market purists" who think cartels are a good thing. After all, teachers aren't barely-literate manual laborers; they have college degrees - shouldn't they be able to negotiate a salary on their own? If there were a market in teacher pay, for example, I'm reasonably certain that a high school physics teacher would make a lot more than a kindergarten teacher. Instead, in most public systems, pay is determined by seniority and box-checking. (Got a master's degree? Check. Gone to summer course X? Check. Collect for each box checked.)

Whole story.

[AnonymousClown]

Then there are teachers like my sister who pulls in close to $70K per year, gets a $3,000 raise when she completes teacher training programs in the Summer, and has this incredible pension with TIAA CREF paid for by the school system that guarantees that she'll retire as a millionaire.

My mother was a book-keeper for a school district and as a result was able to get the same benefits as the teachers. She has absolutely no problems with money in her retirement, now and she isn't exactly a frugal person to put it lightly.

In my financial planning class, we were shown stats that showed that teachers are the tops when it comes to people who retire as millionaires.

If you start teaching at the age of 22 right out of college and stick with it for 30 years (retire at 52), you'll be set for life - nice comfortable life. The first couple of years suck in terms of apy, though. But after you get over that hump, you're making a nice living. Looking back now, I kind of wish I did that.

Either your mother is in a very shitty school district, or you're not telling us the whole story.

Re:Since when is a teacher solely responsible

[Chibi Merrow]

I know this is Slashdot and all... Could you be bothered to even slightly learn anything about the source's methods?

The study tracks scores from year to year... And it shows that there are certain teachers who consistently bring scores down, and other teachers who consistently bring scores up. Since students are assigned practically randomly, if it was all down to how hard the students tried we wouldn't see that.