Rating Teachers: a Job for Journalists? The <i>Los Angeles Times</i> and "Value-Added" Analysis
This case goes behind the scenes to examine the thinking at the *Los Angeles Times* about a 2010 project to rank public elementary school teachers of English and math. It follows editors and reporters as they petition for existing student test data, and then decide whether and how to analyze it (they hire a Rand Corp. expert) to reveal teacher effectiveness. The key question is accountability: should the paper name individual teachers when it publishes the scores?
Case number:
CSJ-11-0040.0
Category:
Journalism Cases
Topics:
education reporting, public service journalism, data journalism, editorial decisionmaking
Teaching resources:
Epilogue,
Teaching note