In her blog, VAMboozled, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley reports that the LA Times plans again to publish teachers’ value-added ratings. When they did it in 2011, a teacher committed suicide. Researchers discredited the results. Since then, researchers have demonstrated that these ratings are unstable and inaccurate. They bounce around from year to year. The Times doesn’t care whose career or reputation they blight. Nor can they demonstrate that their publication of ratings in 2011 helped kids, teachers, our schools.
When the reporters Jason Felch and Jason Song called me in 2011, I said that what they were doing made me feel “sick to my stomach.” They added my comment to their story. But nothing could stop their desire to humiliate teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Although the LA Times is not yet owned by Rupert Murdoch, it mirrors his type of yellow journalism. When it was run by Otis Chandler is was one of the world’s great newspapers. Now it is only good to line the garbage can.
After the dreadful outcomes of their last teacher rating debacle, the LA public wanted no more of this, but the power of the billionaires and their legal teams reaches even to this media outlet, and it seems apparent that they want teachers to be kept quiet and in their place.
Teachers and people interested in improving public schools need to boycott the Times and those associated with it. Over time if they see they are losing money, then they will adjust their behavior. Money is their only goal, so unless you are willing to campaign against financially supporting these papers you will never change their behavior. They are and have never been interested in helping public schools or the children attending them. If they were then you would see stories about why and how we could stop poverty, homeless children, and other related topics to why children do not perform better in school. Good luck!
hmmm… I think it’s time for a BAT blast on the Times
Yes, boycott the LA Times, a Chicago paper owned by the Chicago based Tribune Co.
Years ago, when I used to live in the Los Angeles area, the LA Times was a respected newspaper… even before I moved out and came to Texas, that was already questionable… but now, they are reaching for new lows….
There they go again…
A friend of mine commented, “Printing [names of] parents with socially poor parenting skills would be more effective. IMHO”
Sadly, I suspect that publishing the teacher ratings is all about money/ads; its certainly not about good journalism. The more controversy, the more readers, the more ads. Consider the U.S. News College rankings, which are based on junk data; they were such a bonanza that long after it ceased to be viable as a weekly news magazine, U.S. News continued to publish and make (most of its?) money on its rankings. (Fair disclosure, I used to work at U.S. News, though I had nothing to do with the rankings.)
It makes me feel like we’re living in the “Hunger Games” … grrrrr
Publisched last week by UTLA:
Judge grants Stay in release of AGT Scores
California Supreme Court upholds Stay
Elementary School TeacherUPDATE: The California Supreme Court upholds the Stay on disclosure of AGT scores tied to individual teacher names that were to be released in December 2013. If the Supreme Court grants a review of the case, the Stay will be in effect for approximately 6 to12 months.
In August 2013
At UTLA and LAUSD’s request, a judge granted a Stay today in the release of AGT scores of individual teachers to the L.A. Times. The court initially ruled that the District must turn over the data to the Times. The judge’s Stay puts the public release of that data on hold, pending UTLA’s filing of an appeal to the state Court of Appeal.
UTLA and LAUSD are on the same side in this fight. The L.A. Times went to court after District officials refused to release teachers’ individual AGT scores to the newspaper for publication. LAUSD attorneys argued that the District cannot release the scores because they are part of confidential personnel records. UTLA attorneys argued that, because AGT scores are unreliable and unstable over time, disclosure is not in the public’s interest.
UTLA strongly opposes the public release of personnel records, including AGT scores, and will pursue all legal avenues to prevent their disclosure.
“In 2010, the last time the Times published scores like this, we saw that nothing positive came from it,” UTLA President Warren Fletcher says. “It only resulted in the blaming and shaming of teachers based on the discredited junk science of VAM and AGT.”
Public opposes release of scores: The court case comes on the heels of an eye-opening public opinion poll that found that nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose making public the student test scores of individual teachers. The survey, released this month by Gallup and PDK International, also found that, in a shift in public opinion, a majority of Americans oppose evaluating teachers based on test scores.
LAUSD does not want the scores published because it is a legal issue. According to the ed code, teacher evaluations are private. Therefore, if test scores are used to evaluate teachers and they are public knowledge, a teacher can sue. Too bad the lamebrains at UTLA can’t explain it to you. That is the only reason Deasy is against it. Why isn’t UTLA fighting to get the data base removed from the Times? They are incredibly stupid, that’s why. Teachers need to vote OUT Warren Fletcher and the current UTLA leadership which has done nothing but take teachers’ hard earned pay.
I read this quote at one point and it bears reflection in this time period… it goes, “I want to be informed by the news not influenced”. We have huge media issues at this time as what is published seems to be determined by the “highest bidder’s opinions” and has no basis in fact. I am speechless as to the level of horrific behavior exercised by the Los Angeles Times in publishing the nonsensical VAT scores of teachers. HORRIFIED. There needs to be a new “accountability”.. that those involved in the systematic destruction of public education including teacher’s professional standing and students… be HELD ACCOUNTABLE. These times feel a bit like the McCarthy era and LA is championing this kind of behavior. Disgusting!
You are asking for the same thing, art, that the reformers are asking for from the school districts: accountability. Doesn’t that make you feel a little uneasy? A little inconsistent?
Accountability for numbers is one thing. Accountability for myriad factors beyond anyone’s control (hunger, special needs, violence, drugs in the home, being a friggin’ HUMAN for chrissake) is quite another. Definitely hold these jokers accountable for what they’re potentially doing to these teachers’ careers.
Very well put, “RF.” However, teachers are being “held accountable” not just for their inputs, but for their outputs, as measured by their students’ scores, when those scores are manifestly dependent on a good deal more than just the teachers’ inputs. Thus, accountability for “numbers” still seems suspect to me.
I just mention in passing that the LA Times, however irresponsible it is, is to some extent protected by the 1st amendment. Except in cases where direct injury to a teacher can be proven beyond reasonable doubt to a jury, legal action would not likely be successful. I’m not really sure how a newspaper can be held accountable unless it reporters and editors have committed a crime.
Now publishing teachers’ VAM scores is in the larger sense a “crime” in my view because apparently VAM scores are neither valid nor reliable, but it appears not to be illegal in the usual sense for them to do so.
I agree. The news should be reporting the news not creating the news. When the news becomes the news they are no longer the news.
My teaching methods are about the same as they were last year. A bit better, as I learn and grow. But my student population has changed. I have more students now with discipline problems, who come from real poverty, who come to me reading far below grade level.
Last year, I was an ‘above average’ teacher, but this year I’m just ‘average.’
I suppose, if my student population changes even more, I’ll continue getting worse as a teacher.
No good teaching goes unpunished.
Puts me in mind of the saying, “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Go to H*ll and back…….LA Times..
ALL teachers in L.A. and the surrounding communities need to discontinue their subscription to the L.A. Times. They need to call the paper and ask to speak to a supervisor and tell them WHY they are cancelling. All California teachers belong to the union, so the union leadership should spread the word. NO teacher in their right mind should support this kind of constant public harassment. We need to support each other.
There may be something positive about this (hear me out)… I think the more these VAM ratings are published, the more people will realize how invalid and unreliable they are. Hopefully, the public would wonder how a teacher can be rated high one year and fall in the bottom third the next year. Such a “drop” isn’t uncommon and stakeholders know these teachers didn’t forget how to teach effectively in a year’s time. Gates and (I think) Rhee have spoken out against publishing these ratings. I think the reason is they KNOW the public will catch on to this charade.
Publishing inaccurate data on an individual teacher which harms his or her professional standing is a classic case of libel. Teachers who are erroneously labeled as low performing (as happened with the super-star math teacher the last go-round) should sue the LA times as knowingly using measures they know contain major flaws. Can you imagine the Times publishing data on car performance which they knew were faulty? They would be sued in a flash.
I am clueless. Since the VAM is part of a teacher’s evaluation and that is a personnel issue, how are these “scores” released? Will it soon be possible to publish student scores too? When will this type of harassment stop?
By publishing the teachers vam….all of the school children will know the students in the class that received the scores..
I can see it now….
32 students in Teacher Vam’s Class
23 Poverty
9-Homeless
25-Single Parent
etc etc etc….Oh well……
Diane referenced a teacher who committed suicide in 2011.
His name was Rigoberto Ruelas. He was not a data point.
The first three paragraphs from an LATimes article:
“As a teacher in an impoverished, gang-ridden area of South Los Angeles, Rigoberto Ruelas always reached out to the toughest kids. He would tutor them on weekends and after school, visit their homes, encourage them to aim high and go to college.
The fifth-grade teacher at Miramonte Elementary School was so passionate about his mission that, school authorities say, he had near perfect attendance in 14 years on the job.
So when Ruelas, 39, failed to show up for work last week, his colleagues instantly began to worry. And their worst fears were confirmed Sunday morning. In the Big Tujunga Canyon area of the Angeles National Forest, a search-and-rescue team with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department discovered Ruelas’ body in a ravine about 100 feet below a nearby bridge.”
Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/28/local/la-me-south-gate-teacher-20100928
Please read the rest. He deserves at least that much.
This was the result of this Testing Mania…
Education is so much more that performance on one Test given on one day of one year..
I talked to 5 teachers in the past 3 weeks and asks them about their scores..
Every single one of them said “I do not care”….
Teachers have been programmed to Test…Now…They really do not care about the scores….
This young man that took his life is the result of misinformation from this horrible newspaper…..How sad…Hope the family sues and the paper goes bankrupt..
Thanks for the support
What people don’t seem to realize is that if the scores are published, the district can’t use them in evaluations which is the only reason LAUSD is fighting it. Thousands of teachers’ scores from from 2009 and 2010 are in the data base and are easily accessed, so what’s the difference now, anyway? Most parents know who the good teachers are. They don’t need junk science and a third rate newspaper to tell them anything but more BS lamestream media.
I don’t understand why published scores couldn’t be used in evaluations. Please clarify ttt.
It is a legal issue.
It is beyond me how VAM can still be used. We know the measures are unreliable, and there is credible reason to believe that the measures are not valid. If I am remembering correctly, even the economists who developed the theory say it is not ready for use. How can anyone justify using them much less publishing results?!
Nothing the ed reformers do have to be reliable or credible. In fact, the US has become the poster country for the most bullshtt.
LAUSD does not want the scores published because it is a legal issue. According to the ed code, teacher evaluations are private. Therefore, if test scores are used to evaluate teachers and they are public knowledge, a teacher can sue. Too bad the lamebrains at UTLA can’t explain it to you. That is the only reason Deasy is against it. Why isn’t UTLA fighting to get the data base removed from the Times? They are incredibly stupid, that’s why. Teachers need to vote OUT Warren Fletcher and the current UTLA leadership which has done nothing but take teachers’ hard earned pay.
And before I sign off, I would just like to say that I can’t believe that teachers on this blog are actually quoting the likes of Fletcher, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee, for god’s sake! They are bent on your destruction. Well, at least that goes for Gates and Rhee. Fletcher just has no idea what he’s doing. Ya’all had better do some serious reading before the next election. Seems like you have a lot to learn, no offense.
I would go further to say that VAM are a criminal fraud. The book The Mismeasure of Education by Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn contains Denise’s amazing research into the history of the VAM fraud in Tennessee, including details of the legislative history. The twists, turns — veritable cartwheels — that have gone into continuing VAM in Tennessee are now a clear matter of history, documented. The success of VAM has been a triumph of marketing, not of science. Should the LA Times commit the same attack it did last time, the challenge should be more serious and the accountability for the Tribune corporation more severe.
Interesting Comment…
Publishing teacher student scores . . .
Some believe student scores for each teacher should be published, this way we can demean teachers. The teachers and districts will be more productive after such scrutiny, correct? After all the numbers do not lie – especially of you take them out of context — right?
What if we did the same for doctors. . .
Cardiologists should be published for the number of patients they lose due to heart disease.
Oncologists should be published for the number of patients they lose to cancer.
Brain surgeons should be published for the number of patients they lose or impair.
Military doctors should be published if they lose soldiers in war.
Emergency room doctors should be published for the number of stabbings and gunshot wounds and domestic abuse cases they see.
Doctors without Borders should report every impoverished case they lose while volunteering in Africa.
Geriatricians who treat the elderly should have their losses published.
We should compare these skilled doctors to: dermatologists, general practitioners, podiatrists, optometrists, plastic surgeons, audiologist, and allergists.
Publish the losses in the paper!
What you say? Doctors can NOT be compared like this!
Why not? We do it to teachers!
No one considers that some of America’s BEST teachers will never have the high student scores.
No one considers that some of the most highly trained teachers are needed in schools that do NOT perform well on standardized tests.
No one considers that demeaning professionals in this manner will cause . . . teachers to NOT want to teach riskier kids.
No one considers that the scores indicate overall need of students . . . NOT teacher ability or skill.
Simply . . . some patients are more risky, needy and harmed. A doctor or teacher may not be able to cause these patients to score as well when compared to another professional with less risky patients.
We call some students at-risk for a reason.
Just like a doctor, I treat everyone who walks through my door. I have chosen to work in places that need me the most. My life work is to teach at-risk kids to read. I do my personal best. My students have many obstacles to overcome.
Now I have to also endure an oppressive business oriented total quality management return on investment scoring system . . . which will compare my inner city, limited English, impoverished, free and reduced lunch kids . . . . to kids who have no risk at all.
Publish away. See if this improves education for even one student. I’m going to predict no improvement at all due to teacher and student score publishing.
That makes your newspaper score: ZERO.
I admire your commitment to the hard to teach kids, but I must object to the analogy between teachers and doctors because the body is the body regardless of culture, whereas the mind differs depending on SEC. Healing the body is in some ways easier than remediating ignorance because to the extent we understand physical processes, the rules and science are clear. Moreover, ultimately every doctor loses every patient because we all die. Medical treatment is an immediate life and death situation, which is foundational to all other activities of life. Education is not. It is a matter of the soul or spirit as much as the intellect. You are on the side of the angels.