Frank Wells, office (562) 478-1375, cell (562) 708-5425
David A. Sanchez, president of the 325,000 member California Teachers Association released the following statement today regarding the findings of a major study by the National Education Policy Center condemning the methodology and conclusions of a Los Angeles Times analysis of individual teacher effectiveness in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
"This study confirms what educators have been saying since the Los Angeles Times first published their deeply flawed and irresponsible ratings of LAUSD teachers. Not only did the Times use their own highly inaccurate "value-added" method of data collection, but they then made bad conclusions from bad data and published it for the world to see. The effectiveness of a teacher cannot be measured by one or two standardized test scores and the Times did a great disservice to all educators by reducing something so multifaceted and complex to something so simplistic. CTA hopes that others who have considered following the Times' example will take this new report and its conclusions seriously, and that the Times will act with much greater caution and concern in the future before it ever again considers needlessly and wrongly besmirching thousands of dedicated education professionals."