How the LA Times Got the Teacher Ratings Wrong: The worst teacher in Los Angeles

[Hannah Bell]

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....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 who was ranked as "the worst" by the LA Times - a ranking that came as a huge surprise to her former students...

http://www.calitics.com/diary/12545/how-the-la-times-got-the-teacher-ratings-wrong


What happened was, she got a class with only five English-speaking students. "Ireland knew that if they landed in ESL programs in middle school, they would have few chances to take challenging academic classes." So she focused on English skills instead of test prep -- even though other teachers warned her her test scores would suffer.

And by the end of the year, all her students were fluent in English.

****

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.

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. That is, under any standard except the one the LA Times used to brand her as the "least effective" in the entire LAUSD.

http://www.calitics.com/diary/12545/how-the-la-times-got-the-teacher-ratings-wrong


What a horrible teacher:

There was a red binder crammed with letters that former students sent over the years; a stack of printouts from her Facebook page, where students and parents are rallying to her defense; and a video of her retirement dinner, featuring a student from the fifth-grade class of 1976, now a college professor with a PhD, who came back from Indiana to thank her: "I didn't have any extraordinary talent," Helen Neville told the crowd. "But she believed I could do extraordinary things if I applied myself. And she gave me the tools to do that."

Some, like this one that arrived last January, are from students she barely recalls: "I don't really know what you saw in me to inspire the type of kindnesses you bestowed upon me, but I want to thank you for them because I never forgot how they made me feel."

Those kindnesses? Ireland appointed the girl to clean the faculty lounge, a "privilege" that went to one student each year and paid 10 cents every day. She let the girl help file classmates' work in the cabinet next to the teacher's desk. She gave the girl a ride to school some mornings, when she passed the girl walking alone.

"These may seem like small simple things, but as I write this letter to you, 30 years later, my eyes are filling up with tears. You must have known that I needed to feel special and you took the time and made the effort to help me in ways that have lasted for my lifetime."

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-banks-20100914,0,6236087,full.column


How small, petty, cold, technocratic & inhumane the ratings system the deformers devised is. As is the market-based education system they're steering us towards.

[Hannah Bell]

1. kik

[jpgray]

3. Another kick. This seems pretty important

[jpgray]

2. Statistics will only tell you so much

If careers are made or lost by an uptick in some statistic, that statistic will be maximized. But there is no guarantee, or even necessarily a likelihood, that what the statistic was meant to measure (i.e. quality of teachers, student achievement) is also maximized. Encouraging dropouts, shunting poor performers out of your class, refusing to deal with students at a disadvantage--these can increase one's stats far more easily than being a great teacher can.

[Hannah Bell]

5. same as standardized test scores in math & english can't measure everything about a student's

performance or progress.

the main thing they're good for is the bean-counter's campaign to hierarchically rank & divide the populace, the better to make war on them.

[Gold Metal Flake]

4. Kick

[ipaint]

6. An excellent example of why this push to privatize public education is first

and foremost a money grubbing, despicable attack on children.

[Hannah Bell]

7. +100. she's the worst teacher in all of los angeles? seems they're in pretty good shape then.