Martha Fernandez Ruiz

A 3rd grade teacher at Morningside Elementary in 2008

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, Ruiz ranked:

More effective than average 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.
More effective than average in English. Students of teachers in this category, on average, gained about 2 percentile points on the California Standards Test compared with other students at their grade level.

Ruiz's LAUSD teaching history

2002-03 through 2008-09 academic years

Morningside Elementary, 2008 - 2003

Martha Ruiz's Response:

While I agree that there must be accountability for teachers, and a way to weed out ineffective teachers, I deplore the way in which the LA times has chosen to present this information. This index shows only 1 component of teaching, rather than looking at the overall activities and instruction that go on daily in classrooms. This only reflects how children do on a test, not how well they learn to become life-long learners, or how they learn to handle themselves socially, which for me and many others, are a truer test of our "effectiveness" as teachers. Because of this, I don't believe that it's fair to publish names with rating scores in a newspaper, and I don't know of any other profession that would stand for this kind of public scrutiny. I am greatly disappointed that a newspaper of your stature would stoop to this kind of reporting, which further attacks the morale of the vast majority of teachers who give it all they've got, daily, for their students. Shame on the LA Times!

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.