Union leader calls for boycott of LATimes; A.J. Duffy objects to the paper's analysis of the effectiveness of more than 6,000 teachers

The California Teachers Association (CTA) continues to pretend that all teachers are equally skilled at teaching. CTA is fiddling while Rome burns.

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Union leader calls on L.A. teachers to boycott Times
A.J. Duffy objects to the paper's analysis of the effectiveness of more than 6,000 elementary school teachers.
By Jason Song and Jason Felch
Los Angeles Times
August 15, 2010

The Los Angeles teachers union president said Sunday he was organizing a "massive boycott" of The Times after the newspaper began publishing a series of articles that uses student test scores to estimate the effectiveness of district teachers.

"You're leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which has more than 40,000 members.

Duffy said he would urge other labor groups to ask their members to cancel their subscriptions.

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Based on test score data covering seven years, The Times analyzed the effects of more than 6,000 elementary school teachers on their students' learning. Among other things, it found huge disparities among teachers, some of whom work just down the hall from one another.

After a single year with teachers who ranked in the top 10% in effectiveness, students scored an average of 17 percentile points higher in English and 25 points higher in math than students whose teachers ranked in the bottom 10%. Students often backslid significantly in the classrooms of ineffective teachers, and thousands of students in the study had two or more ineffective teachers in a row.

The district has had the ability to analyze the differences among teachers for years but opted not to do so, in large part because of anticipated union resistance, The Times found.

The newspaper plans to publish an online database with ratings for the more than 6,000 elementary school instructors later this month.