Appellate Court Gets It Wrong on NYC Teacher Data
by Frederick M. Hess • Aug 25, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareHere's something you won't read too often in RHSU: "UFT president Michael Mulgrew is right." But he is. Just today, a New York state appellate court ruled that New York City must release reports that show value-added data on a teacher-by-teacher basis, with teachers' names attached. I agree with Mulgrew that this is an unfortunate decision.
New York City issues the reports in question to about 12,000 teachers annually, covering teachers in fourth through eighth grades whose kids take the state reading and math assessments. The value-added model in question incorporates a variety of factors, including student absenteeism, race, class size, and so forth. The result is good and useful data that ought to be incorporated into management decisions--but that shouldn't be