Fern Goldstein

A 3rd grade teacher at Overland 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, Goldstein ranked:

Most effective overall.
More effective than average in math. Students of teachers in this category, on average, gained about 4 percentile points on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.
Most effective in English. Students of teachers in this category, on average, gained about 7 percentile points on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.

Goldstein's LAUSD teaching history

2002-03 through 2008-09 academic years

Overland Avenue Elementary, 2009 - 2003

Fern Goldstein's Response:

As stated in my letter to your editor............test scores reflect a PARTICULAR group of students that are 'given' to each teacher for a particular academic area. Each student group is clustered in one class as Intensive-below grade level, this includes English learning students, students in the
Resource Program, and students being mainstreamed from Special Ed classrooms OR students determined to be on grade level OR students determined to be above grade level. Although we hope that students in all groups will improve, it is unrealistic to think that students in the Intensive group will show the same progress as those students in the Advanced group. I have taught for 34 years at the same school....I have seen such reports many times and this LA Times study is another example of just looking at data and ignoring numerous additional pertinent facts that effect how individual students will perform on tests. I'd like to see the Times publish the number of senior/experienced teachers that have resigned early due to pay-cuts, lack of respect,lack of appreciation, unreasonable work loads to be done at home and so on. In all honesty, it is the parents at my school that have supplied me with the encouragement and support to continue in this profession in the worst economic times for LAUSD and Los Angeles.

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.