Teachers Union Fights Release of Test Score Report

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39779121

New York City's school system plans to release ratings for nearly 12,000 teachers based partially on student test scores -- but the city's teachers union is fighting its release, saying the measuring system is far too flawed to make names public.
The report will attempt to measure the progress made by students from fourth through eighth grades under their teacher by comparing test scores in math and English in a given to the previous year.
The United Federation of Teachers, claiming such data should be kept internally, will take the matter to court this afternoon. A DOE spokeswoman said that unless a court interferes today, the city will make the reports public on Friday.
The ratings come amid a national debate over how teachers should be evaluated and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's call to eliminate automatic tenure for the city's teachers.
New York City's Department of Education officials, who originally told union representatives that they intended to keep the sensitive information private, said they could not find an exemption to state records laws that would preclude disclosure, The Los Angeles Times reports.
The release was prompted by requests from several news organizations.
"We believe the public has a right to the information," said Natalie Ravitz, an Education Department spokesman said.
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But critics think the process is flawed. "There isn't a reliable value-add system anywhere on this planet," said union President Michael Mulgrew told the Wall Street Journal.
This so-called "value-added data" on city teachers uses a complex formula that tries to take into account test scores combined with factors outside of the teacher's control, such as poverty, class size, home life and disabilities.
The report also compares teachers based on similar class size and living standards.
Experts said the release of teacher scores by the district could be a milestone and could increase the possibility of similar analyses by districts throughout the country.





Teachers grade students, but they don't want themselves to be graded on. Why is that? Are they afraid of what they might see?

Haven't you heard? The only way to true equality is to bring us all down to our lowest common denominator!

Our schools here SUCK. Crappy teachers that only want parrots being defended and kept by crappy administrators that only want to fill bureaucratic check boxes all willing to skew, or burry, the truth in order to make their complete and utter failure look like a success.

The only exceptions are those few children who are exceptional enough, or given exceptional enough resources outside of the school, to corrode their chains of conformity.

I hesitate making such things public because as we all know, statistics are abused to hell. One could easily look at the "rankings" and say the bottom 10% should be replaced when there were mitigating circumstances (or even that the top 10% should get raises!). I've said it before and I'll say it again, merit pay..... or at least some sort of "hard" quantification of performance for teaching is so difficult to grasp because the "raw" materials and "product" are not comparable - if you happen to get stuck with a bunch of dunces whose parents couldn't give a crap about their kids, or are assigned classes that tend to have these students, you could put in 80 hours a week teaching and it wouldn't manifest in better test results. Alternatively, you could be a crappier teacher with much better kids and parents and "luck out".

Quote from DCINNJ : Teachers grade students, but they don't want themselves to be graded on. Why is that? Are they afraid of what they might see?

There was a similar issue here in Los Angeles when LA Times did a similar study on value-addition.

I am for merit-pay, eliminating tenure and making teachers very accountable. But, I don't see how this can help.

First, it is important to understand why teachers don't want this information public. It is perfectly reasonable. Would you want your school and college transcripts and annual performance reports made public? I'm pretty sure I won't be too happy if that was done, especially if the scoring was as complex and fundamentally fuzzy as value-addition is. Once you a put a number next to a person's name, all the fuzziness of the math behind the number disappears and all that remains is such and such teacher got such and such number. That's neither fair nor respectful.

DCINNJ, your analogy clearly illustrates why this is inappropriate. Would you like your high school and college transcripts and annual performance reports all made public for all to see? I assume not. YOU should be able to chose who has access to that information.

But, there's another more important reason why this information shouldn't be public. And, that is that it is utterly useless from a practical standpoint. The general public cannot "fire" a teacher. People who can should have this information and the public should hold THEM accountable for the overall performance of the school system.

I am a huge fan of school ranking. Once you know how good or bad your school is, parents, teachers and administrators within that school should work together to improve it. To do so, you need good teachers to help those who're not so good. Because, that's the only way the school can really improve. Once you put information like this out there, parents will be fighting over getting their kids into classrooms of better teachers, teachers will be pulling legs to get better scores, and administrators will be rendered ineffective because of pressure from the top (political) and bottom (public/parents).

This is extremely useful data. It should be open for research (anonymized, of course).It should be used to determine both pay and whether or not a teacher gets contract but I don't think it should be splashed on the fro

Quote from Neo Tocqueville : There was a similar issue here in Los Angeles when LA Times did a similar study on value-addition. I am for merit-pay, eliminating tenure and making teachers very accountable. But, I don't see how this can help. First, it is important to understand why teachers don't want this information public. It is perfectly reasonable. Would you want your school and college transcripts and annual performance reports made public? I'm pretty sure I won't be too happy if that was done, especially if the scoring was as complex and fundamentally fuzzy as value-addition is. Once you a put a number next to a person's name, all the fuzziness of the math behind the number disappears and all that remains is such and such teacher got such and such number. That's neither fair nor respectful. DCINNJ, your analogy clearly illustrates why this is inappropriate. Would you like your high school and college transcripts and annual performance reports all made public for all to see? I assume not. YOU should be able to chose who has access to that information. But, there's another more important reason why this information shouldn't be public. And, that is that it is utterly useless from a practical standpoint. The general public cannot "fire" a teacher. People who can should have this information and the public should hold THEM accountable for the overall performance of the school system. I am a huge fan of school ranking. Once you know how good or bad your school is, parents, teachers and administrators within that school should work together to improve it. To do so, you need good teachers to help those who're not so good. Because, that's the only way the school can really improve. Once you put information like this out there, parents will be fighting over getting their kids into classrooms of better teachers, teachers will be pulling legs to get better scores, and administrators will be rendered ineffective because of pressure from the top (political) and bottom (public/parents). This is extremely useful data. It should be open for research (anonymized, of course).It should be used to determine both pay and whether or not a teacher gets contract but I don't think it should be splashed on the fro

My boss gets my progress report and if I do bad I am fired. The boss of teachers is the public. Why shouldn't their bosses get a report?

Quote : This so-called "value-added data" on city teachers uses a complex formula that tries to take into account test scores combined with factors outside of the teacher's control, such as poverty, class size, home life and disabilities.

sounds like they're taking numerous variables into account, which I personally wouldn't even do if this was my report. disabilities and class size.. yes, but home life and family economic structure.. We are therefore stating that people of lower incomes are allowed to be slightly less intelligent than those w/ higher incomes???

Teaching may be one of the more difficult professions to evaluate. But.. year over year results sounds like one of the best ideas I can imagine. Doesn't this in fact inspire teachers to work harder.. if they are judged partially on their students standardized testing performance.. they would want their students to understand the material to score higher.. right???

Quote from Xygonn : My boss gets my progress report and if I do bad I am fired. The boss of teachers is the public. Why shouldn't their bosses get a report?

The public does not vote for teachers.

We do vote for school boards who appoint teachers. Our taxes pay their salary.

Quote from Xygonn : My boss gets my progress report and if I do bad I am fired. The boss of teachers is the public. Why shouldn't their bosses get a report?

In that respect, we are the "boss" of every police officer, fire fighter, DMV-employee, librarian, civil servant, general, marine, soldier, and so on. Should the progress report of ALL of those millions of people be available for everyone to see? More importantly, would you want to work for an employer that puts your progress report online for everyone to see for perpetuity.

We all understand the concept of a layer of management and how the ultimate boss - be it share holders of a publicly traded company or the general public -- exercise their ownership through managers. We hold managers accountable and managers in turn as supposed to hold employees accountable.

As I detailed in my point, I am all for the managers -- in this case, principals, administrators, school board, etc. -- not only to have access to this information but use it to hold the teachers accountable.

You and I neither hire teachers nor have the ability to fire them any more than we have the ability to fire an employee of a totally private business -- i.e., via public protests. So, there's no reason for us to have access to these reports.

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Quote from Xygonn : My boss gets my progress report and if I do bad I am fired. The boss of teachers is the public. Why shouldn't their bosses get a report?

As Neo wrote in the post you quoted, the public is not the "boss" of teachers. The public has no direct power to hire, fire, or set wages, and no context or perspective through which to interpret such numbers. There are people in supervisory positions who can and should use such information, but nothing is gained through slapping a number next to a name in the newspaper.

It would be quite as silly to publicize the competency evaluation scores of LEOs or firefighters.

We might pay the bills, but we are not "bosses," and publicizing the data provides no benefit, while including real possibility of harm.

EDIT: Well, I see I'm too late to contribute anything new here. :-)

Quote from Neo Tocqueville : In that respect, we are the "boss" of every police officer, fire fighter, DMV-employee, librarian, civil servant, general, marine, soldier, and so on. Should the progress report of ALL of those millions of people be available for everyone to see? More importantly, would you want to work for an employer that puts your progress report online for everyone to see for perpetuity. We all understand the concept of a layer of management and how the ultimate boss - be it share holders of a publicly traded company or the general public -- exercise their ownership through managers. We hold managers accountable and managers in turn as supposed to hold employees accountable. As I detailed in my point, I am all for the managers -- in this case, principals, administrators, school board, etc. -- not only to have access to this information but use it to hold the teachers accountable. You and I neither hire teachers nor have the ability to fire them any more than we have the ability to fire an employee of a totally private business -- i.e., via public protests. So, there's no reason for us to have access to these reports.

The answer to the first question is yes. I would love it if all public employees were subject to public scrutiny. Then we can votesupervisors out of office that clearly do a poor job managing their employees. Especially police and firefighters.

Quote from DJPlayer : sounds like they're taking numerous variables into account, which I personally wouldn't even do if this was my report. disabilities and class size.. yes, but home life and family economic structure.. We are therefore stating that people of lower incomes are allowed to be slightly less intelligent than those w/ higher incomes??? Teaching may be one of the more difficult professions to evaluate. But.. year over year results sounds like one of the best ideas I can imagine. Doesn't this in fact inspire teachers to work harder.. if they are judged partially on their students standardized testing performance.. they would want their students to understand the material to score higher.. right???

You're talking about a different issue. The issue at hand is whether evaluation of teachers should be made public or not.

As for your question about taking family economic situation into account ... obviously, the goal isn't to allow lower income folks to remain less educated but to allow for the fact that students coming from low-income families probably do not have the same level of support in their academic pursuits that students coming from higher income families. I think it makes perfect sense.

This isn't an evaluation of students -- students are evaluated based on standardized tests. This is an evaluation of teachers. So, this whole "value-added" method of evaluation basically says ... not all students are the same, but we will account from those differences in the 'inputs' to a teacher (such as family and background, etc.) and then grade how much a difference the teacher is able to make in "raising" the outputs namely, the test scores. It is actually a relatively new idea but it's a good start.

Quote from ASG : The public does not vote for teachers.

The public controls the purse strings for the educational system, and controls who the person is who can do the hiring and firing ultimately.