Method to Grade Teachers Provokes Battles
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Michelle A. Rhee, center, the Washington schools chancellor, fired about 25 teachers partly over poor value-added evaluations.
By SAM DILLON
Published: August 31, 2010
How good is one teacher compared with another?
Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times
Karen Caruso teaches in Los Angeles, where some teacher ratings are made public.
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A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles — with some saying it is an effective method for increasing teacher accountability, and others arguing that it can give an inaccurate picture of teachers’ work.
The system calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with
