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

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.

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.