Can You Grade A Teacher? L.A. Times thinks We Can

The Los Angles Times and it's writers have written a provocative article about how teachers can be evaluated using student tests and they can show, over time, whether a teacher is effective or not.
From the L.A. Times: Seeking to shed light on the problem, The Times obtained seven years of math and English test scores from the Los Angeles Unified School District and used the information to estimate the effectiveness of L.A. teachers — something the district could do but has not.
The Times used a statistical approach known as value-added analysis, which rates teachers based on their students' progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student's performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors.
Though controversial among teachers and others, the method has been increasingly embraced by education leaders and policymakers across the country, including the Obama administration....
Some students landed in the classrooms of the poorest-performing instructors year after year — a potentially devastating setback that the district could have avoided. Over the period analyzed, more than 8,000 students got such a math or English teacher at least twice in a row.
• Contrary to popular belief, the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas. Rather, these teachers were scattered throughout the district. The quality of instruction typically varied far more within a school than between schools.
• Although many parents fixate on picking the right school for their child, it matters far more which teacher the child gets. Teachers had three times as much influence on students' academic development as the school they attend. Yet parents have no access to objective information about individual instructors, and they often have little say in which teacher their child gets.
• Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers' effectiveness were not. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students' performance.
Other studies of the district have found that students' race, wealth, English proficiency or previous achievement level played little role in whether their teacher was effective.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,258862,full.story
The Times also came up with a composite of effective teachers: On visits to the classrooms of more than 50 elementary school teachers in Los Angeles, Times reporters found that the most effective instructors differed widely in style and personality. Perhaps not surprisingly, they shared a tendency to be strict, maintain high standards and encourage critical thinking.
But the surest sign of a teacher's effectiveness was the engagement of his or her students — something that often was obvious from the expressions on their faces. (emphasis mine)
The Times may be on to something here. (BTW, that is not how you are taught teach in college school of education classes)
But the education system is not in favor of this. The teacher's union in Los Angles has called for a boycott of the Times. The administration and teachers are caterwauling about whether this is fair or an effective way to evaluate a teacher.
It would be a mistake to use standardized test over a one or two year period to evaluate a teacher, however using this approach or many years, you can generally see if a teacher is doing a good job or not and there is no reason why you can't use this information to evaluate a teacher and their effectiveness.
Maybe CCSD can look into this.


h/t From where I sit http://www.fromwhereisit.org/