The Arcade Fire – Empty Room

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It’s out.

The L.A. Times’ investigation on teachers has finally published a searchable database for elementary teachers and schools using the “value-added” approach. This means that starting today, anyone can literally perform a search on any LAUSD elementary school teacher and see how their students perform in their classroom.

A word of advice to any elementary school principals out there: hire a good secretary today, because tomorrow expect a barrage of telephone calls from parents who want to ensure that their young rapscallions (to use a favorite noun of a colleague of mine) wind up in Teacher X’s classroom, and not Teacher Y’s. Wonderful.

Thus far in this blog series, I’ve tried been fairly equitable in any opinions rendered related to this issue. However, I draw the line right here. The Times should not have published the database. Why? Because even if the Times does have the motive to change educational policy with it’s reporting (which I think is accurate), it has already accomplished exactly that in the last two weeks. Our union is already willing to renegotiate teacher evaluations, and our superintendent has said that he wants “value-added” to be a part of it. Regardless of whether I think value-added is good or bad (or incomplete), publishing this database accomplished nothing additionally for the L.A. Times readership. In fact, if one of the goals of the Times (or the district, or even the union for that matter) is to improve the quality of education for the children of Los Angeles, publishing this database does nothing to that end. The argument that good teachers need to be rewarded (and bad teachers need to be supported) is likely a valid one, but there are plenty of other methodologies to accomplish that end, rather than merely posterizing individuals by name in a national daily periodical. (Part 6, my final post in this blog series will deal with exactly how this could be accomplished, and what should have been done). All that the publication of the database does is create friction, especially as it will now fall upon principals to deal with any irate parents who may now just have the ammunition they need to push their way around a school.

In fact, in this whole L.A. Times series, today’s piece is hardly worth the read at all; its only (potentially) useful piece of information being that “good teachers exist”.

What is really interesting, and fairly eye-opening is the set of teachers’ comments regarding their own “value-added” scores. And while I don’t recommend making any sort of judgments about teachers based on their scores, it is very interesting to see the variety of responses elicited from those whose job performance is now on blast. The responses range from dejection, to acceptance, to utter outrage, to constructive criticism, to questioning validity, and more. Just to give you a sample, here are four teachers’ scores accompanied by their comments. The four encompass the range of both high and low “scores” as well as “positive” or “negative” reaction to the Times’ study. It’s worth seeing this range of commentary.

This debate is only going to get more fiery as the school year is about to start.