Yvonne Marie Burch-Hartley

A 4th grade teacher at Glassell Park 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, Burch-Hartley ranked:

More effective than average overall.
Most effective in math. Students of teachers in this category, on average, gained about 11 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.

Burch-Hartley's LAUSD teaching history

2002-03 through 2008-09 academic years

Glassell Park Elementary, 2008 - 2006

Yvonne Burch-Hartley's Response:

The state provides scale scores to show the proficiency of each student tested, and our district provides a report that shows this data across three years. These scale scores are calculated by the state so that proficiency is rated equally across grade levels and the changing standards being taught. My students have typically made almost equivalent progress in both math and language arts. While my students in math achieve proficiency at a higher level than in language arts, they are making progress at about the same rate in both subjects. The difference is that my students are predominantly English Language Learners. So despite having made gains in their acquisition of these language arts skills, that work is seen as less effective than the work we did in math. In many cases, my students out-performed the district scores in language arts. Some of them gained proficiency in language arts, while many of them are closer to that goal. Is that ineffective?

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.