LA Times Writes Another Value-Added Story

Here's how they frame their story:

For L.A., possible lessons in D.C.'s controversial teacher evaluation system

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

In school districts including Washington's, New York's and Houston's, officials are using a method called 'value-added' to bring a measure of objectivity to the process. But virtually no one endorses it as the sole gauge of an instructor.

Even before I read the story, the first thing I thought was - wait a minute! When you hand out rankings according to value-added analysis of test scores and hold teacher employment and pay captive to those rankings, you are implicitly endorsing it as the sole gauge of an instructor.

That's the deal. That's it.

When the LA Times put a caveat at the bottom of their August value-added analysis story that said this was just one measure of a teacher's performance, NOBODY read it.

All anybody, including the fourteen year vet who was declared "ineffective" by the LA Times and later committed suicide, saw was the rankings.

So stop with this jive that value-added is just one measure of teacher effectiveness.

When the rankings are published in the papers and teacher pay, tenure and employment is tied to those rankings, it is effectively the ONLY gauge of teacher effectiveness.