More comments from ‘Grading the Teachers’ chat

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In an online chat last week, Times staff writers Jason Felch and Jason Song answered questions and addressed comments from readers about their Grading the Teachers series.

The chat drew more than 450 participants who submitted more than 300 comments. During the hourlong chat, there was time only to post and respond to 32 of them. However, all of the submissions were saved, and many of the comments that were not published in the chat are included in this post. In addition, Felch and Song will be answering some of the remaining questions in a separate post.

These comments have been arranged by topic:

Privacy:

Carol Perry: As a retired LAUSD teacher, I strongly object to publishing teachers’ names in the database. When teachers administered the tests, which they were required to do, they were not informed that their names and student scores would be published. The Times is violating their privacy rights. What support is going to be given to these teachers when they start school and students say ‘You’re an ineffective teacher.’

John Leonard: I’m glad to learn that J Felch taught for some years. It helps me be open-minded. I actually admire your work; and am only appalled by the decision to rob me of my presumption of confidentiality and privacy in re sensitive personnel matters.

Ms. P: As a 4th grade teacher, I’ve been in the district over 10 years. I feel there are some very valuable things that could actually come from this data. However, as an educator...I feel rather ambushed by this whole piece. Some comments have lauded teachers for being willing to participate in this expose. I find it shocking that I had NO knowledge of this coverage occurring...nor did I ever give any sort of consent for my name/data to be published.

Westside Teacher: Jason Felch -- Most teachers are on summer break. You are not giving teachers a fair chance to respond. You are literally ambushing our profession, which I know is the whole point of all this. But our careers can be seriously damaged by what you’re doing.

Mary Ann Dunigan: I’m wondering how many of these questions and remarks come from a teacher’s perspective. Most teachers right now are either in their classrooms teaching or preparing their classrooms for school opening.

Westside Teacher: I know teachers are curious about their scores, but I bet most don’t believe the public has the right to see data that might be bogus. Statistics can be interpreted many different ways.

Fairness:

Informed Educator: How would you feel if you were held responsible for the Times’ significant drop in circulation and subscriptions because those numbers were much higher prior to your employment as journalists with The Times? Do you think that would be a fair evaluation of your quality and effectiveness as journalists?

Guest: Will physical education teachers be measured on how much weight their students lose?

Guest: I wish the public was given the opportunity to actually see the actual tests these students are taking and then ask if this is a fair way of measuring their students and teachers.

non-believer 1: I really don’t think your paper is really doing their ‘homework’...You have Ms. Banks starting her editorial off with insult...then you have the other ‘reporter’ that covered the ‘charter schools’ not making part of his story that the charter school only has a population of 300-plus while the LAUSD school down the street has a one-thousand plus population...Big difference!!

TeacherSabrina: Norms engender failure. By putting everyone on a distribution, you’re making some teachers look much worse than they are, instead of sharing whether or not they meet a certain standard of acceptability.

The ‘effective’ or ‘ineffective’ labels:

Christian Kinney: I like the idea of using testing to demonstrate effectiveness, but my problem is the terms that are used. An ineffective teacher is not a bad teacher. The two teachers shown as ineffective from a testing standpoint don’t deserve the label ‘bad.’

Carol Perry: I suggest you qualify your statements of ‘effective teachers’ or ‘ineffective teachers’ to ‘in relation to improvement in test scores.’

David Tokofsky: Do you think the phrase ‘ineffective teachers’ is the best phrase for productive and useful change and improvement of the system and individuals?

TeacherSabrina: The ‘highly effective’ teachers you highlighted were both described doing things that some people would rightly criticize. I’m not sure I trust that you’re in any position to say who is and isn’t a good teacher.

Valley teacher: I am a teacher trainer, mentor, grade level chair and present at conferences on effective teaching strategies and according to your report and data I am ‘least effective.’ There are many factors that affect teaching and learning. Please use fair reporting and tell the whole story.

From parents:

3rd St. Parent: I thought your piece was very intriguing. My child had one of the teachers you labeled as ineffective. I don’t disagree with many of the points you made. However, even after reading the article, I would be extremely hesitant in having my child in the other ‘effective’ teacher’s class next year. She may be effective, but it does come at a price in the way the class is disciplined. I thought that part was picture was lacking. Overall though, good piece.

Doreen: After so many years of parents feeling their complaints and concerns about teachers go nowhere, we are so glad someone is breaking open this topic. Thank you. Students are evaluated based on their test scores, so why shouldn’t teachers be also?

LAUSD Parent for 17 years: I have been an LAUSD parent and involved with school committees for many years at several schools, elementary through high school. It is appalling that LAUSD hasn’t yet developed a comprehensive method to evaluate teachers. There are many teachers who are ineffective, who do not want mentors and live in their ‘classroom bubble,’ affecting students every year. It is high time to address this issue, and I applaud the reporters for their efforts in opening this dialogue. LAUSD spends too much time and money on their politicking rather on the students’ best interests.

GG: As a parent I would like to have access to the information on my child’s teacher. This would assist me with helping my child. For example if I knew that the potential teacher was rated low, I could either request a change in the class room assignment or opt for another method of teaching the information i.e. private or a charter school.

SofiaA: I am a parent of two children in a LAUSD elementary school. This past year BOTH my children had fantastic, effective teachers who moved my children forward in their education. Both teachers had overcrowded classrooms with a wide variety of students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. But since the teachers were extremely effective, the class size and student backgrounds were insignificant. I am so glad that your study is highlighting that it’s the teacher that matters the most.

On value-added analysis:

Pam: I agree that data should be transparent, but the way it’s presented is very important if we really want it to result in improved learning for children. Research has shown that teacher collaboration is effective in increasing student achievement. As a result districts throughout the country have encouraged collaboration in recent years. There might be unintended consequences from your article – such as making teachers more competitive and impeding them from sharing best practices with each other. That would negatively impact the children, which I’m sure was not your intent.

Karoline: ‘The assumption underlying the approach is that many of these factors are consistent in a student’s life...if a student was poor in 2nd grade, they’re likely to be poor in 3rd.’ This assumption applied to the value added approach leads me to doubt its worth. Kids growing up in difficult circumstances do not face a consistency of life circumstances. They deal with chaos. Chaos and consistency don’t go together---so I don’t know how researchers can imagine this. I hope you will interview some child social workers about this reality too.

L.A Teacher: This concerns me greatly because the Gifted Students came in proficient and advanced and tended to stay there, and the students learning English (ELLs) tend to progress only at one level a year, resulting in me not being able to add much value to my score. Yet without this key piece of information about the make-up of my classes the parents will assume that I have an average ranking because the quality of my work is average.

Role of administrators:

Informed Educator: Until this year teachers had to go through paper records to compare students’ year to year CST scores. I’m a middle school teacher with over 100 students. This information could have been made available via computer years ago, but the district was too busy wasting millions on redoing the payroll system and correcting the mistakes made when this was done.

CJ: In the corporate world, employees are given evaluations or (hopefully) some feedback from their supervisors. If the employee is fired for not performing well, usually the employee has some idea why. The administrators haven’t given teachers a real assessment or the chance to improve. I would be more on board with the release of this data if teachers knew their scores first, received some training, and then had a year to try to better their scores. Some parents will unfairly judge their children’s low-scoring teachers and demand that their children be placed with the high-scoring teachers, which would be impossible to accommodate. I feel the teachers will be harshly judged rather than the ineffective administration. In fact, most administrators were probably good teachers who left the classroom because administrative jobs pay more and are more ‘9 to 5’ but leave their former colleagues to suffer in silence. Classroom teachers truly have a difficult and challenging job.

John K: there are many effective teachers, they just don’t fire the bad ones.

Shane Twamley: There must be some measure of accountability for teachers and state testing is required. I feel there is an imbalance in the journalistic reporting in some ways. Teachers are partially to blame, but really....leadership is much more to blame as the L.A. Supt. bragged about having better data than anyone else in the nation, however.. the teachers were unaware of this data, they do not know how to use the data to change their instructional targets, and State Supt. O’Connell had a plan to teach teachers how to analyze this data but because of the state’s economic woes this plan was dropped.

Results of the data:

Ms. S: As a teacher, I know that most of us are highly defensive about our methods and practices. Some of us may have even settled into a comfortable rut and justified it with saying ‘I’m just not tech savvy’ or using the same lessons for years. Being labeled ineffective should be a wakeup call to teachers who need to question their methodologies. Those who are not willing to invest in their communication and effectiveness skills should consider other employment.

Highly effective teacher: I have mixed feelings about the article. On the one hand, as a highly effective teacher myself, I am glad for the recognition. Sometimes it is hard to stay a highly effective teacher because there is so much pressure to please the parents by giving high grades. I have colleagues who are loved by parents because they give very high grades, but in reality, are ineffective teachers (as demonstrated by the test scores at least).

Marshal Merriam: As a prospective teacher I would really like to find teachers who are highly effective. It would allow me to assemble a collection of best practices. How do they handle cheating? Classroom discipline, etc.

NarNar: We sit here and worry about doing damage to the teachers. But the truth is LAUSD is at the bottom of the barrel concerning education.

Shane Twamley: Thank you Mr. Felch for saying that about the teachers not receiving the proper support. I only wish you had expanded on this more in the article. Data Analysis is not part of teacher credentialing and SHOULD be. When State Supt. O’Connell recently tried to lead teachers into the information age by giving them training in Data Analysis, he had to pull it back due to the terrible state economy of the past two years.

Karoline: That surprises me to hear that many teachers had not seen the test scores of their students. When I was teaching it was common practice to see their scores from the previous year for use at parent conferences.

Sarah F.: To answer your question, Jason, yes -- we should be look at what great teachers do. I appreciated the first part of your series (for the record: I’ve taught English Composition at SFSU for nine years, plus taught high school English full-time for a year) and am excited about the discussion it is sparking. I do think you might have had a more nuanced and receptive response had you begun the series by profiling one incredibly top-notch teacher and then moved on to your criticisms. Not only would you have illuminated for people the incredibly complex decisions that go into good teaching, but you would have also provided a clearer, more comprehensive framework against which people could ‘evaluate’ the ‘poor teachers’ in your story.

Chrisk: I’m concerned that parents might ask that their children transfer to the 10% of the teachers rated ‘effective,’ leaving the school in a predicament.

Praise:

Highly educated: I’m a teacher that teaches with all of the factors that many teachers are complaining about. Those are excuses!! We should be evaluated on our performance. However, why not merit pay? If the public and state are holding me that accountable, then pay me!!

Dick Schutz: Your reporting takes ‘investigative reporting’ to a whole new level. The previous applications of ‘value added’ statistical methodology have been anything but transparent. The tests still remain secret, and you are the first to identify teachers by name. The investigation will have wide ramifications. That’s positive.

Education professor: You have stimulated a great discussion. Putting data out there is the public domain makes it part of our civic debate. I hope more newspapers follow your lead.

Guest: Absolutely great job and long overdue. In 1996 I had the idea to look at the improve and decline in the test scores by teach to support my reviews with them. I looked at the data I had by teach, test subject and computed the number of ‘improved’ and ‘declined’ students. It was appalling; the over 50% of students or more showed declining scores. The administration would not let use the data directly with teachers. In the business world reviews are based on fact and employees get raises based on merit. It is time we institute that with teachers. Value added evaluation should be part of comprehensive, yearly (not every 2 or 4 year) review and it should affect their salary.

Kimon Haramis: These reporters are doing great work. Why are educators so defensive? They should be pleased to have their hard work published and noted.

Eugene: Publish both teacher and student scores...why not? I commend you guys. Academia won’t be fixed by academics.