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I can't imagine how humiliated the 5th grade-teacher felt having a picture of him teaching his class with a caption labeling him as one of the least effective teachers. There appears to be no consideration regarding decency and sensitivity of the people involved. In the private sector such treatment of a staff-level employee would never be accepted and would most definitely lead to a lawsuit.
I can't imagine how humiliated the 5th grade-teacher felt having a picture of him teaching his class with a caption labeling him as one of the least effective teachers. There appears to be no consideration regarding decency and sensitivity of the people involved. In the private sector such treatment of a staff-level employee would never be accepted and would most definitely lead to a lawsuit.
Later this month, The LA Times will post on its website a database with ratings for more than 6,000 elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, showing their effectiveness or ineffectiveness in the classroom as estimated by a "value-added" analysis of student test scores.
If you taught in Grades 3, 4 or 5 in L.A. Unified at some point during school years 2002-03 through 2008-09, and had at least 60 students total during that period, LA teachers may be in the database.
The teacher bashing has already started on talk radio here in Los Angeles, and this morning Fox News reported about this same article.
I am a teacher who has been teaching for 18 years, and I will say that my test scores have consistently been rising as my teaching practices have improved. Also, working with teachers by sharing techniques and ideas have helped me improve my test scores. How do you all feel about this rating system, and how accurate do you think it is?
The surprising thing is that some teachers considered very good are getting negative added value evaluations. I thought is was very wrong to feature a teacher complete with picture and interview who had been determined to be ineffective. This could be a real moral killer and exacerbate problems it was intended to help. Once you identify a slew of ineffective teachers in the press what do you do? Terminate them all at the same time. Give parents the option not to have them and double the class size for those determined to be effective. Where do you find the replacements? Wait LA is laying teachers off and has already done so to many. LOL they canned effective teachers and still have ineffective ones. Now what? Is this the grounds for law suits? Johnny has teachers identified as ineffective and the district knew it and when he doesn't learn as projected who is at fault and sued. With all the challenges facing the LA school district this is one big tub of something being dumped on them. It isn't the process that article is advocating that is a problem it is the article.
My issue isn't with the information being made public or accessible online; my issue is that the info is printed in the newspaper and, therefore, I wonder about the intent of the newspaper and/or administration. If it's already available online, then why publish the info in the local paper?
Every time I have heard of a school or individual doing this (publishing in the newspaper), the intent is to humiliate and disgrace a teacher so that he/she will never want to or be able to teach again and to provide evidence to the fact that will garner public support for the teacher's ouster.
Gotcha. I do agree. I also think it's fairly easy to "arrange" a class that's going to show negative value-added analysis in order to disgrace that teacher.
I'm not a fan of the LA times, but they are heros for doing this. Teachers have become a joke in this country. As the unions get more powerful, the quality of teachers continues to decrease. Any profession where pay and lay offs are determined by seniority, is going to yield some pretty poor results. Could you imagine if doctors were paid like this? If the education industry was privatized we would not have half the problems we do today.
I'm not a fan of the LA times, but they are heros for doing this. Teachers have become a joke in this country. As the unions get more powerful, the quality of teachers continues to decrease. Any profession where pay and lay offs are determined by seniority, is going to yield some pretty poor results. Could you imagine if doctors were paid like this? If the education industry was privatized we would not have half the problems we do today.
Private schools are schools of choice for parents that want their children to get a better education with smaller class sizes. But here's the problem with private schools, not all of them are run the same way, and not all of them are as good as the other one. Some do and will discriminate against a child who is academically challenged because they can argue that they don't have trained teachers to work with THOSE kind of students.
We tend to put down public education as if all public schools are bad, and all private schools are the better alternative. When in actuality, there are very good public schools with very good teachers who have been very well trained, and more qualified to teach than your private school teacher. Case in point, private school teachers work their butts off for a fraction of what public school teachers make, and are basically pimped out by private schools because the private schools don't require their teachers to have a credential nor a degree, especially a post graduate degree. Public school teachers are encouraged to earn a higher degree as well to get additional training in areas where they need to grow.
The main difference between private and public schools is this. Parents that pay for their child to go to private school are demanded by the private school to be involved in their child's education. Also, parents aren't going to send their child to a private school for that child to earn Cs or below.
Whereas at a public school, parents who can't afford to send their child to a private school have to deal with the reality that every child in the USA, legal or not, special needs or not, mentally challenged or not, and poor or not are all dumped in the same pot and basically have to fend for themselves if they want to succeed and graduate out of high school. It's just something to think about.
I have a great deal of respect for teachers. They are underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated. They frequently have the monumental task of trying to teach/discipline/raise kids whose parents have failed to do their job. Instead of focusing on embarrassing these fine individuals, they should post the names and addresses of the PARENTS.
Bad move by the LA Times.
The Times wouldn't do this. Because that might expose the fact....
-Many of the kids are minorities.
-The parents who fail at home may not even speak english.
-The family may not value education the way others do.
I think its very curious that the Times focuses exclusively on teachers, rather than shifting demographics, or shifting attitudes about education at home, or kids in and out of jail. There are reasons why test scores go up or down. Many of them are completely out of control of teachers or schools.
It'd be like judging a meteorologist, about what the weather is going to do today. Or judging the National Hurricane Center over the accuracy of their hurrican calls. Sure, they have the technology. They have part of the answer.
A better investigative study would be....who's teaching LA's kids at home? Instead of embarrassing a teacher on the front page, take pictures of the students home. Are there books on the shelf? Very curious what these stories leave out. I think the truth in many cases would be too embarrassing. The best teachers can't add books to your shelf at home.
They can't force you to read and learn in your spare time.
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