Why It’s a Bad Idea to Release Teacher Ratings
by Norm Fruchter
The United Federation of Teachers has gone to court to block the NYC Department of Education’s (DOE) release of teacher performance ratings based on value-added measures of their students’ test scores. The DOE agreed to hold off on publishing the ratings until a court hearing on November 24th.
The New York City Department of Education (DOE) has a contract with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research to produce reports on value-added results based on the student test scores of more than 12,000 NYC teachers who teach ELA and Math in the fourth through eighth grades. The union, a partner in this research, had negotiated an agreement with the DOE not to make the results public. Instead, the results were to be shared with school principals and used in teacher evaluations and tenure decisions. When the DOE violated their agreement by deciding to make the results public and release them to the news media, the union decided to g
