The question arises: Should the Los Angeles Unified School District have voluntarily made its value-added test-score data public? Not necessarily. Washington, D.C.'s schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, said she would consider?declassifying such information, but that ?It would have to be managed in the right way . . . and given the right context.??It's not too tough?to envision?the context?warranting such disclosure, but it is easier to envision the disclosure's result: thousands of intensified parents phoning a district to insist that their children be enrolled in classes taught by only the highest-scoring teachers.
School districts should do what LAUSD did not do?namely, deploy value-added data to help teachers become?better at their jobs and to hold accountable those educators that cannot or will not improve. So long as a district does this, so long as it strives to aid the production of potent teachers, it need not make public all the data it collects.
Certainly, after publication of the Los Angeles Times's expos?, LAUSD's phone lines will be clogged by thousands of angry parents inquiring as to why their children have been taught by supposedly inferior teachers and demanding change. This, alas,?is not the Times's problem. It did its job. The same cannot be said for LAUSD.
?Liam Julian