L.A. Times rates teachers again, unfortunately
It’s deja vu all over again with the Los Angeles Times and its value-added scores that supposedly tell us how effective are the teachers in the nation’s second-largest school system.
The newspaper has printed its new ratings of elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District based on how well students did on standardized tests. The idea is to use a formula that the newspaper had devised to assess the “value” a teacher added to a student’s achievement.
The newspaper says its project takes into account the complexities of measuring teacher performance. But it essentially ignores some obvious points:
*Teachers aren’t the only factor that go into how well a student does on