Rick M. Wong

A 5th grade teacher at Dixie Canyon Avenue Elementary in 2009

These graphs show a teacher's "value-added" rating based on his or her students' progress on the California Standards Tests in math and English. The Times’ analysis used all valid student scores available for this teacher from the 2002-03 through 2008-09 academic years. The value-added scores reflect a teacher's effectiveness at raising standardized test scores and, as such, capture only one aspect of a teacher's work.

Overall value-added effectiveness

Math effectiveness

English effectiveness

This chart shows where teachers in this effectiveness category fall on a distribution of all teachers’ scores.

Compared with other Los Angeles Unified teachers on the value-added measure of test score improvement, Wong ranked:

Less effective than average overall.
Less effective than average in math. Students of teachers in this category, on average, lost about 4 percentile points on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.
Average in English. Students of teachers in this category, on average, did not gain or lose significantly on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.

Wong's LAUSD teaching history

2002-03 through 2008-09 academic years

Dixie Canyon Avenue Elementary, 2009 - 2003

Rick Wong's Response:

Being effective to students should take more than just test scores. If an infant hasn’t mastered learning to walk by age one, does that mean he has ineffective parents? In contrast, a child who is walking by age one has very effective parents? My point is that to take test scores to measure a teacher’s effectiveness (good or bad) is unjust. The many hours of planned instructions that went on in the classroom throughout the school year fade away in the background and disregarded, even though they were effective at the time. Also, there is a difficulty of raising scores that were already high. It is harder to raise scores for our gifted students than others at the same grade level. And what about students who do reach a perfect score of 600? Haven’t they been the product of effective teaching?

The Times gave LAUSD elementary school teachers rated in this database the opportunity to preview their value-added evaluations and publicly respond. Some issues raised by teachers may be addressed in the FAQ. Teachers who have not commented may do so by contacting The Times.