Thursday, April 07, 2011

Cue the Britney Spears music: “Oops, we did it again!” :: L.A. TIMES TO CONTINUE IT’S OWN ‘VALUE-ADDLED” TEACHER ASSESSMENTS + smf’s 2¢

Los Angeles Times offers teachers a preview of ratings

Beth Shuster | LA Times/LA NOW | http://lat.ms/hVRWTb

Graphic: Shows presentation of teachers' ratings in the second version of the Los Angeles Teacher Rating databaseGraphic: Shows presentation of teachers' ratings in the second version of the Los Angeles Teacher Rating database. The red line shows the best estimate for an individual teacher, and the shading represents the range in which each teacher's estimate falls with 90% certainty.

April 6, 2011 |  6:54 pm - As of Wednesday, The Times is inviting 11,500 elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District to preview and comment on new individual teacher effectiveness ratings prepared by the newspaper.

The “value-added” ratings, based on district data, have been calculated for nearly all third- through fifth-grade teachers in the nation’s second-largest school district. They are estimates of each teacher’s effectiveness in raising the standardized test scores of their students in math and English.

Teachers who taught math or English in third, fourth or fifth grades at some point during the 2003-04 through 2009-10 school years and want to get an advance look at their scores can go to www.latimes.com/teacherresponse for more information.

Comments should be submitted by noon on April 14 to be included in the database before it is published. Comments received after that date will be added to the database after it has been posted at latimes.com.

School districts that use value-added analysis to assess teachers’ performance generally do not release the information to the public. The Times is publishing its ratings because they bear on the performance of public employees who provide an important public service and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to the information.

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2cents smf: The Times office on First Street must be a lot like the LAUSD Puzzle Palace on Beaudry -  little communication between the cubicles!  A week ago the Times Editorial Board took the Florida legislature to task for an “adversarial (policy that) puts far too much emphasis on test scores to determine pay, layoffs and teaching assignments” - cautioning against ‘silver bullets and magical thinking’ – and pretty much put the LAUSD reform ball in Supt. Deasy’s court [http://lat.ms/g1IXy8] …yet they persist in this!

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