On Education: Shedding Light on Teacher Data Reports
Feb. 28, 2012, 11:18 a.m.
I’m delighted that the New York City education department has finallyreleased its teacher data reports.
Finally, there are some solid numbers for judging teachers.
Using a complex mathematical formula, the education department’s statisticians have calculated how much elementary and middle-school teachers’ students outpaced — or fell short of — expectations on annual standardized tests. They adjusted these calculations for 32 variables including “whether a child was new to the city in pretest or post-test year” and “whether the child was retained in grade before pretest year.” This enabled them to assign each teacher a score of 1 to 100,