This year, my administrator has departmentalized the school in grades 2-5 (each teacher teaches only one subject, just like middle school and high school). Therefore the students on MY 5th grade roster are receiving instruction in math from a teacher other than myself. The instruction they are receiving from this teacher will be reflected in this year's CST. If their scores drop in math, it will appear as if this is due to my instruction. I am highly concerned and do not want my value added rating posted if it does not truly reflect my instruction.
Sincerely,
Katrina Blowitz

After much consideration I finally decided to respond to my VAM. Yes, I feel horrible as a teacher that my students did not score as well on the English Language Arts and Math portions of the CST. And yes, one would think that the fact that I have taught fifth grade for five years consecutively would have made me master teacher at test-taking. However, this is not the case. Have I done a disservice to my students that they did not score Proficient or Advanced? Have I ruined their chances to be identified as GATE so that they may move up along the academic rungs of LAUSD schools? Now that I have been pink slipped and reflecting on my past 8 years of teaching I realize that despite my students' CST scores I have made a difference in their lives. I have implemented a structured PE program and encouraged the whole entire staff to fulfill the minimum required PE instruction. Former students return to show me their bling from 5K, 10K, and marathons. When we no longer had a math coach, I continued to organize Math Olympics at my school. I along with my upper grade colleagues strive to support our staff to teach science starting from the primary grades. I show up to my students' football, basketball, and softball games, cheering them on because I love seeing the smile on their faces when they see a familiar adult rooting for them. I teach visual arts, theatre, and dance because it is important even though the district has now cut down the elementary arts program down to 13 teachers for the upcoming school year. I share my experience and expertise in culinary arts by cooking healthy snacks and meals with my students and teach them how to analyze what they eat. Some of my former students tell me they still have the cookbook we made together and ask if we still cook in class. In past years, my colleagues and I met with GATE students during lunch and afterschool to create student-produced monthly newspaper and yearbook. I could go on and on...I am not only my students' teacher, but also mother, sister, counselor, nurse, etc. but most importantly their listener who will respond accordingly and hope to guide them along their path of success. It saddens me that so many people choose to represent a teacher or a student with a test score. What ever happened to the human quality of teaching?

The state and value of education in our country has made the (involuntary) end of my service to LAUSD bittersweet.

Once again you have violated the right to privacy of thousands of teachers. As I stated in one of my many responses to your August exposé, this information belongs at the school site and with the district. Value added is not a reliable data analysis model, yet you present it as an "objective" measure of our efficacy. This is not true, fair, or accurate.

Your on-going battle with UTLA uses teachers as pawns. Publishing our ratings is not beneficial to anyone. Rather it promotes ill will between colleagues, teaching to the test in lieu of a well-rounded education, and in the case of Rigoberto Ruelas, the final straw in an incredibly stressful profession. I hold the LA Times responsible for his death. I hold the LA Times culpable for irresponsible and politically motivated reporting. I hold the LA Times responsible for slandering and attacking professionals who have far more integrity than your publication. I hold the LA Times responsible for being a major contributor to the privatizing of public education.

These scores reflect an accurate account of my teaching practices, although the results could be higher in English effectiveness. But, based on the knowledge I have of my students' levels, I am pleased with these results.

It is all very well and good to rate a teacher, but what you should also take into account are the parents who don't make their students do their homework or study the academic materials taught during the school day. The parents who don't come to parent conferences because they are to busy watching the novelas or soap operas on tv. The parents who only show up at the end of the year at culmination and want to glad hand you and take a picture with you. These are the parents who should also have a value rating and that rating would be failure.

You want to blame the teachers who don't teach and I to would love to get rid of ineffective teachers, but how do you do that without also holding parents and administrators accountable for not doing their job also.

I appreciate the spirit behind the L.A. Times' effort to rate teacher effectiveness. I think everyone would agree that our students deserve effective teachers. That being said, I hope the Times and the public take into account that reading, math, and learning English in LAUSD are required to be taught with heavily scripted and micro-managed politically correct textbook programs imposed by edict by principals and above, stifling teacher skill and creativity. This teaching is heavily policed. Supplementing with other, more academically effective materials is forbidden and punishable, and taught at the teacher's peril.
I'm disappointed that the Times overlooks additional measures of my effectiveness, e.g., parent satisfaction with my teaching; the progress in English of immigrant children in my classes; my work building up the self-esteem and self-confidence in my students that they can learn, because many of them come to me thinking they can't learn to read or compute; and my successes teaching academic subjects not covered on the standardized tests, i.e., social studies, science, health, music, art, and physical education.
I hope the Times and the public remember that we are teaching the whole child, including character education, and teachers ought to be evaluated -- and appreciated -- for this broad teaching, as well. -- Orli Wallace

As I continue to say, the students reflected on these scores were students from another teacher's classroom. These teachers were part of a program that I was the coordinator for and they retired or took a leave of absence during the above mentioned years. As the coordinator, my responsibility was to put my name on their classroom rosters in order to give their students report card grades. Therefore, the scores shown above are reflective of students who had another teacher for most of the school year, with the exception of one. I would also like to add that it is shameful of the LA Times to continue to publish information that could potentially hurt teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District as a way to boost newspaper sales and profits! Shame on you LA Times!

During the years in question we were mandated at our school to teach 3 hours of Language Arts and 1 hour of Math. We were held to those specific time constraints. In addition the district was constantly revising the pacing plan which they called the Math Instructional Guide or MIG. Each year they would take the lesson that had already been organized in the Math text book and switch them around- omitting lessons that built understanding for future learning and have us try to piece together some threads of understanding. The Math instructional program was a mess but I followed it exactly as we were told to- by my administrator and Math Coach. Additionally, I have a bilingual certification, so I was always working with students who were English Language Learners. For students who did not have the language skills to access the curriculum learning English was a priority. Was that factored into this measure? Furthermore two of the years that I am being rated on for Math I actually didn't teach Math at all! We were departmentalized at my school and although students were listed on my roster, I taught students from two classes and I only taught Language Arts, Social Studies, Art and Technology. I did not teach Mat! Another teacher was responsible for Math, Science, Health and PE. And just for your information the first year I participated in the departmentalized program one third of my students moved up in Language Arts while almost all the other student maintained. The following year out of 60 students I was able to move half of the students up (30), while almost all the rest maintained. These are just a few of the factors that have influenced the scores and which demonstrate the lack of validity in this teacher effectiveness measure. I am an award winning teacher, board certified, and have conducted numerous inservices in Language Arts, Technology, and yes, Math. I have also contributed to the learning communities I have been apart of by bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and donations to our schools. Parents lobby my administrators in order to have their children in my classes, and anyone who knows me knows I have the highest professional ethic. But according to your data, I just some average and seemingly deficient instructor.

All this proves is that some teachers are better than others at teaching test taking strategies. It does not measure writing, English language development or even general reading progress. And who can trust the accuracy of any LAUSD data base? In 2003-04, I was teaching a grade that was not even tested which makes this invalid! It's a shame that your reporting has sunk to the level of the National Enquirer.

There are so many different factors that influence a teachers' effectiveness in the classroom. We shouldn't be concentrating on these numbers. It's an injustice to all of the learning community.