Hermineh Markosyan

A 3rd grade teacher at Breed Street 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, Markosyan 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.
Less effective than average in English. Students of teachers in this category, on average, lost about 3 percentile points on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.

Markosyan's LAUSD teaching history

2002-03 through 2008-09 academic years

Breed Street Elementary, 2009 - 2005

Hermineh Markosyan's Response:

This is interesting. I just calculated the most recent CST scores and my average scores went up by 34%. 92% of my students showed growth of over 10 points. 21/28 students moved up by at least 1 level. Some students moved up several levels. At the beginning of the year I had 7 students in FBB and BB levels. At the end of the year I only had 1 student score BB. This analysis may average overall performance for a five year period but it doesn't not take into effect many other valid factors. For example, several years ago I had a group of 30 4th grade students. Of the 30, 6 were severe behavior problems. One had been pulled from another class and put into mine. I had spent majority of the time dealing with discipline and making sure these students didn't physically harm each other. Naturally this impacted everyone else's learning. Now I am the same teacher with the same teaching strategies, yet my scores differed dramatically between those two years.

Now, I'm not opposed to transparency in education. In fact, I think it's necessary to ensure that our students have the best instructors in the classroom. Yet this blanket assessment does not paint the entire picture.

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.