{"id":12545,"date":"2010-09-21T01:22:50","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T01:22:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-09-21T01:22:50","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T01:22:50","slug":"how-the-la-times-got-the-teacher-ratings-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/21\/how-the-la-times-got-the-teacher-ratings-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"How the LA Times Got the Teacher Ratings Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month the Los Angeles Times decided to publish their own “ranking” of teacher “effectiveness” in the LA Unified School District, based entirely on test scores. The move was extremely controversial, and the Times was slammed by education experts<\/a> for their flawed methodology.<\/p>\n

Today, however, comes a story that proves just how flawed and misleading the LA Times teacher ratings really were. It’s a story of a recently retired LAUSD teacher<\/a> who was ranked as “the worst” by the LA Times – a ranking that came as a huge surprise to her former students:<\/p>\n

Faye Ireland knows that she was a good teacher. She doesn’t depend on test scores to tell her that. She has stacks of letters from former students, enduring relationships with their parents and a reputation for managing the most challenging kids on campus.<\/p>\n

But it bothered Ireland plenty when she was publicly branded “least effective” last month in The Times’ ratings of elementary school teachers. The ranking, in an online database with the “Grading the Teachers” project relies on students’ progress on standardized exams to measure teacher effectiveness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What happened? Is Ireland just making herself sound good to cover up a flawed teaching style?<\/p>\n

Nope. What happened is that by actually giving her students – particularly her ESL students – the help and instruction they needed, instead of wasting time on a test, she made a huge and positive impact in the lives and in the educational futures of her students, but at the expense of her “ranking” in some bullshit test-driven metric:<\/p>\n

Ireland knew that if they landed in ESL programs in middle school, they would have few chances to take challenging academic classes. “Their parents worked with me like crazy, and we got them through all the things they had to do.”<\/p>\n

By the end of each year, “every one of my students was fluent in English,” she recalled. “That’s what I set out to do.”<\/p>\n

Other teachers warned her that her test scores would take a hit…<\/p>\n

But she was looking beyond the test, beyond the classroom, even. “I wanted to transition those kids into English. I wanted them to know they could accomplish this, that nothing was off limits to them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, she could have done what the state and the LA Times wanted – teach to the test – or she could have actually paid attention to her students, understood their actual educational needs, and made sure those needs were met so that they can thrive in their later years of schooling.<\/p>\n

She did the latter, and that’s what makes a truly great teacher. By any standard her work would be seen as a huge success, and she would be held up as a model educator.<\/p>\n

That is, under any standard except the one the LA Times used to brand her as the “least effective” in the entire LAUSD.<\/p>\n

Now it’s possible that Ireland succeeded in some areas, was weaker in others (such as test scores). Only a full and comprehensive evaluation of teachers that includes an assessment of all their skills and accomplishments can truly tell whether a teacher is “good” or not.<\/p>\n

That is precisely what the teachers’ unions are calling for. And that is precisely what the LA Times rejected in their reckless and flawed ratings, based only on test scores – which as most teachers, parents, and students understand, should not be the only thing education is about.<\/p>\n

Ireland’s story shows what will happen if the attack on public schools, led by people such as US Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the LA Times, succeeds. Schools will become full of students who are taught to do well on a test, instead of having their other educational needs met.<\/p>\n

If that’s what the education privatizers want, then that’s their choice. But for those of us who actually want good schools with good teachers in them, we would do well to continue to push back against the flawed LA Times teacher evaluations, and ensure that whatever LAUSD and California come up with next to assess teachers, that it is holistic and not focused on tests to the exclusion of actual educational needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month the Los Angeles Times decided to publish their own “ranking” of teacher “effectiveness” in the LA Unified School District, based entirely on test scores. The move was extremely controversial, and the Times was slammed by education experts<\/a> for their flawed methodology.<\/p>\n

Today, however, comes a story that proves just how flawed and misleading the LA Times teacher ratings really were. It’s a story of a recently retired LAUSD teacher<\/a> who was ranked as “the worst” by the LA Times – a ranking that came as a huge surprise to her former students:<\/p>\n

Faye Ireland knows that she was a good teacher. She doesn’t depend on test scores to tell her that. She has stacks of letters from former students, enduring relationships with their parents and a reputation for managing the most challenging kids on campus.<\/p>\n

But it bothered Ireland plenty when she was publicly branded “least effective” last month in The Times’ ratings of elementary school teachers. The ranking, in an online database with the “Grading the Teachers” project relies on students’ progress on standardized exams to measure teacher effectiveness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What happened? Is Ireland just making herself sound good to cover up a flawed teaching style?<\/p>\n

Nope. What happened is that by actually giving her students – particularly her ESL students – the help and instruction they needed, instead of wasting time on a test, she made a huge and positive impact in the lives and in the educational futures of her students, but at the expense of her “ranking” in some bullshit test-driven metric:<\/p>\n

Ireland knew that if they landed in ESL programs in middle school, they would have few chances to take challenging academic classes. “Their parents worked with me like crazy, and we got them through all the things they had to do.”<\/p>\n

By the end of each year, “every one of my students was fluent in English,” she recalled. “That’s what I set out to do.”<\/p>\n

Other teachers warned her that her test scores would take a hit…<\/p>\n

But she was looking beyond the test, beyond the classroom, even. “I wanted to transition those kids into English. I wanted them to know they could accomplish this, that nothing was off limits to them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, she could have done what the state and the LA Times wanted – teach to the test – or she could have actually paid attention to her students, understood their actual educational needs, and made sure those needs were met so that they can thrive in their later years of schooling.<\/p>\n

She did the latter, and that’s what makes a truly great teacher. By any standard her work would be seen as a huge success, and she would be held up as a model educator.<\/p>\n

That is, under any standard except the one the LA Times used to brand her as the “least effective” in the entire LAUSD.<\/p>\n

Now it’s possible that Ireland succeeded in some areas, was weaker in others (such as test scores). Only a full and comprehensive evaluation of teachers that includes an assessment of all their skills and accomplishments can truly tell whether a teacher is “good” or not.<\/p>\n

That is precisely what the teachers’ unions are calling for. And that is precisely what the LA Times rejected in their reckless and flawed ratings, based only on test scores – which as most teachers, parents, and students understand, should not be the only thing education is about.<\/p>\n

Ireland’s story shows what will happen if the attack on public schools, led by people such as US Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the LA Times, succeeds. Schools will become full of students who are taught to do well on a test, instead of having their other educational needs met.<\/p>\n

If that’s what the education privatizers want, then that’s their choice. But for those of us who actually want good schools with good teachers in them, we would do well to continue to push back against the flawed LA Times teacher evaluations, and ensure that whatever LAUSD and California come up with next to assess teachers, that it is holistic and not focused on tests to the exclusion of actual educational needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21","category-4"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3gl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}