Grading the teachers

L.A. Time reporters Jason Felch and Jason Song will be available Thursday at 11 a.m. to discuss the findings of their investigative report "Grading the teachers." Felch, Song and Doug Smith analyzed tons of data to see which teachers are more effective according to how their students score on standardized tests.

I can almost hear everyone now holding their breath. And yes, their work has both earned praise and drawn ire. Praised from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who endorsing the release of such data publicly. The ire from Los Angeles teachers union president A.J. Duffy, who called for a boycott of The Times in response to the report.

Among the investigation's findings:

• Highly effective teachers routinely propel students from below grade level to advanced in a single year. There is a substantial gap at year's end between students whose teachers were in the top 10% in effectiveness and the bottom 10%. The fortunate students ranked 17 percentile points higher in English and 25 points higher in math.

• Some students landed in the classrooms of the poorest-performing instructors year after year — a potentially devastating setback that the district could have avoided. Over the period analyzed, more than 8,000 students got such a math or English teacher at least twice in a row.

• Contrary to popular belief, the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas. Rather, these teachers were scattered throughout the district. The quality of instruction typically varied far more within a school than between schools.

• Although many parents fixate on picking the right school for their child, it matters far more which teacher the child gets. Teachers had three times as much influence on students' academic development as the school they attend. Yet parents have no access to objective information about individual instructors, and they often have little say in which teacher their child gets.

• Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers' effectiveness were not. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students' performance.

Read the report and drop me a line. I'd love to hear what you think.