These scores are based only on the 2009 through 2010 school year with a class which included a 30 percent special education population. The la nguage arts level of the class in general was a year below grade level upon entering the grade. A large portion of the class entered with below grade average math skills including the need to master third grade skills of multiplication facts. If you look at the progress this class made from the previous year, the class increased their scores dramatically which is indicated in the API scores and not reflected in this evaluation. Prior to 2009 the teacher taught only primary grades which testscores are not included in this study.

These are not my scores. These 19 students are from a 3rd grade class at Alta Loma Elementary School. I was a substitute teacher in this class. I arrived as a substitute two weeks prior to state testing. Their teacher had become sick early in the year. This began a string of at least 50 substitutes for this class.

When I arrived just before state testing, there was total chaos. Almost no work had been completed in any of the workbooks. My take on it was that the entire school year had been lost for these students. I’m sure many tried, but when there is a new substitute every day for months on end, the class falls apart. When that happens, no one will stay. (One day and… no way!)

Because I am a credentialed teacher, they made me the teacher of record so that I could administer the state testing. I was still in a substitute position. Obviously, I never would I have dreamed that this situation would come back to reflect on me… and publically.

When the principal, Ms. Manzanera, asked me how I thought the testing had gone I replied, “Look… from what I saw the whole year had been lost. I got them calm and focused for testing; however it takes a year’s worth of learning and hard work to show a year’s worth of growth.” There was no other way to put it.

I had taught many years, and my scores always went up. Betty Castaneda, my principal for seven years at Los Feliz Elementary School wrote this on my letter of recommendation, “He always met the anticipated benchmarks for his students in their ongoing assessment and the test results for State Testing always showed that each student progressed from the previous year.”

Working hard and getting results has always been important to me. I was a business major in college. It makes sense to me that I should be able to see growth and success on state testing. If I don’t, I need to change something.

I also know that in two weeks, you cannot make up for a lost year. (It takes more than two weeks just to turn chaos into a real learning environment.)

Here is the letter Lisa Manzanera (Principal of Alta Loma in 2007) wrote me:

June 29, 2007
Dear Paul,

Thank you again for taking on this third grade class and so determinedly teaching them! I really honor and appreciate how much you care and how skillfully you teach! Their academic progress proves the point! Thanks again –

Lisa Manzanera

Entering this class, I immediately gathered work samples and documented what I saw. Two months later as school ended, I demanded that Liza Manzanera take home the before-and-after work samples. My success in that classroom was well documented.

I doubt I ever had a year where my State Testing results were not at least average. I care about them. They are important to me. (Even average can be hard when following excellent teachers!)

How could I not have thought about the consequences of being named the teacher of record for state testing in a classroom that had experienced at least 50 substitutes before I arrived? I had two weeks with these 19 students before state testing. I still have all the documentation. (Two months later, at the end of the year, I was still a substitute in that position; however I had become their teacher. The calmness of the class and their progress proved that. Ms. Manzanera, the principal, was witness to this.)

Clearly, I should have been teaching math all day! It would have been a more efficient use of my and my students' time. While I worked equally hard at teaching English, my passion was and is teaching math.

I support the use of this type of data as a part of teacher evaluation. At the very least, this data should be openly discussed and analyzed by teachers and administrators. It should be used with other data to adjust instructional practices. The CST data is used by teachers to help build a profile of struggling or accelerated students. If it is valid for that purpose, it should also be valid for reflecting on instruction.

Classes are not organized equally so you cannot compare effectiveness.
The "GATE" are clustered in one main class every year,the resource and ELD in another, so how can a fair comparison be made?

I was on maternity leave September 2008 to mid-March 2009. My 2004-2005 scores were excluded here in this evaluation, and I did work that entire year. You should include 2004-2005 as part of my teaching history and exclude the 2008-2009 for a fair and accurate evaluation.

I agree that our school system needs reform. With a greater than 30% drop out rate and more than 50 % of students failing to reach proficiency according to CST measurements, something needs to be changed.

What the LA Times rating system fails to consider is that the teachers being evaluated are using a "scripted" program called Open Court, and that most teachers have principals who require them to rigidly follow the script. Aren't these scores more a reflection of the fact that this "scripted" program has failed 60% of students and that principals and the district need to allow teachers to teach more effectively?

The LA Times ran an article about a Pacoima teacher who is "highly effective" and is sharing his methodologies with his peers. I can guarantee that his techniques are not in the Open Court Teacher's Guide and that many principals would reprimand a teacher for using them because they are not part of the "scripted program". I also know that Wonderland, one of the highest ranking schools, does not follow the Open Court program. When is someone going to see that the emperor has no clothes?

This data has been shown to be unreliable by an independent study:

"A new study published today by the National Education Policy Center finds that the research on which the Los Angeles Times relied for its teacher effectiveness reporting was demonstrably inadequate to support the published rankings. Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers by Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue of the University of Colorado at Boulder used the same L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD) dataset and replicated the methods of the Times’ researcher but then probed deeper and found the earlier research to have serious weaknesses." - National Education Policy Center BOULDER, CO (February 8, 2011)

This will certainly be higher for me in the upcoming years. I support the district's use of objective statatistical analysis to evaluate teacher effectiveness.

These graphs seem to show that the majority of teachers "rate" as average or above average. However, because of the mass media focus on teachers as the blame for the state of education in this country, you would think that the majority lie in the less than average portion of the graph. Right now, I feel it is open-season on teachers. And yet your statistics show that most teachers are effectively doing their job, despite all of the tremendous obstacles that are put in our way on a daily basis. The majority of teachers that you rated seem to be effectively teaching children, not because of anything, but despite everything.

The use of testing results as a rating system for teachers is unfair. This system does not take in consideration students' native languages, socioeconomic levels, and family issues that cannot be controled by teachers.