Grading the Teachers Measures, Media & Policies A Free Public Forum September 27, 1:30–4:30 UC Berkeley Banatao Auditorium  310 Sutardja Dai Hall
Media | Reports | Panelists	Flyer | Contact

Watch the Video Here
Measures
Media
Policies

A national debate has raged since mid August when the Los Angeles Times published its evaluations of 6,000 elementary school teachers in its series, “Grading the Teachers.” The paper justified its decision to make the ratings available as an “an important service, and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to the information.”

While President Obama’s administration has made a priority of compensating teachers, at least in part, for their performance, a big part of the controversy is the evaluation method that the LA Times used in its analysis and whether the paper did enough to make the readers aware of the limitations of the “value-added” approach it employed.

“Grading the Teachers” has been a wake-up call to those in research, journalism and education circles to grapple with the evaluation, journalistic and policy issues raised by the LA Times report. On September 27, UC Berkeley answered that call by holding the first and largest public forum to consider the methods and implications of the LA Times report, what promising teacher evaluations are on the horizon and, ultimately, how and whether teachers and students can benefit from them.

---

Panelists
Jason Felch, Mark Wilson, Eric Hanushek, Senator Carol Liu, Richard Rothstein, Sophia Rabe-Hesketh, Susan Rasky, Anthony Cody, David Plank, Kyla Johnson-Trammel 
Moderator: Louis Freedberg

Sponsors
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education
UC Berkeley School of Journalism
UC Berkeley School of Law
UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy
Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE)

---

Background Materials
The impetus for this event is this Los Angeles Times report:
GRADING THE TEACHERS
Who's teaching L.A.'s kids?
A Times analysis, using data largely ignored by LAUSD, looks at which educators help students learn, and which hold them back.
Los Angeles Times 8/14/10

---

Media (reverse chronological order except press release)

Event Articles and Broadcasts

Battling the "Bad Teacher" Bogeyman
Teacher Magazine: Living in Dialogue blog 1/1//11
Washington Post The Answer Sheet 1/3/11
Anthony Cody

Teachers catch lots of heat: Instructors' report cards considered
Monterey Herald 9/30/12

Teacher Evaluation: A Starting Point for Action
Edutopia 9/29/10

L.A. Times reporter participates in Berkeley forum on "Grading the Teacher" series
Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times 9/28/10

Times’ ratings:solution or problem?
Divergence of views at UC Berkeley forum
John Fensterwald - Educated Guess 9/28/10

Sharp divisions over 'value-added' teacher evaluations
California Watch 9/28/10
Louis Freedberg

The Media's War on Teachers
Teacher Magazine: Living in Dialogue blog 9/28/10
Anthony Cody

President addresses failing education system
KGO-TV 9/27/10
(includes video and interviews from event)

Panel to debate measuring teacher effectiveness
California Watch 9/27/10
Louis Freedberg

UC Berkeley to hold forum on teacher evaluations, controversial Los Angeles Times series
Oakland Tribune 9/13/10

Event Press Release 9/14/10

Topic Articles and Broadcasts

L.A. Unified to issue its own 'value-added' ratings of district schools
California Watch/Louis Freedberg 10/15/10

Value of Teacher Evaluations
CBS Evening News 9/21/10

California Board of Education Addresses Teacher Evaluation Issue
Los Angeles Times 9/16/10

L.A. Unified teachers stage protest at Times building
Los Angeles Times 9/15/10

Some Scholars Slam Value-Added for Teacher Accountability
Education Week 9/3/10

Formula to Grade Teachers’ Skill Gains in Use, and Critics
New York Times 8/31/10

In Washington, D.C., Public School Teachers Put to New Test
PBS NewsHour 8/31/10

America's best teacher and the L.A. Times
Jay Matthews Class Struggle Washington Post 8/31/10

Teacher Performance Data Stirs Evaluation Debate
NPR Talk of the Nation 8/30/10

LA Times' Series Examines Teacher Ratings
NPR All Things Considered 8/18/10

OUSD's Big Challenge
Oakbook 8/17/10

U.S. schools chief endorses release of teacher data
Los Angeles Times 8/16/10

L.A. Times ranks teachers based on student scores
The Education Report 8/15/10

Op-Eds and Columns

Rating Teachers: The Trouble with Value-Added Data
Time Magazine 9/23/10
Andrew Rotherham

Assessing a Teacher's Value
What are the benefits and pitfalls of using student test scores to measure a teacher's effectiveness?
NY Times 9/7/10
Linda Darling-Hammond

When Does Holding Teachers Accountable Go Too Far?
NY Times Magazine 9/5/10
David Leonhardt
Letters to the Editor Respsonses
NY Times 9/7/10

Accuracy and disclosure: the issues in values-added dispute
LA Observed 9/2/10
Bill Boyarsky

One number can't illustrate teacher effectiveness
Los Angeles Times 8/25/10
Bruce Fuller and Xiaoxia Newton 

Times school story: insufficient evidence
LA Observed 8/19/10
Bill Boyarsky

Judging teacher performance is difficult, experts say
California Watch 8/18/10
Louis Freedberg

Reports, Briefings, Conferences and Webinars

Value-Added Measures of Education Performance: Clearing Away the Smoke and Mirrors
Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE)/Douglas N. Harris 10/18/2010

Value-Added Modeling of Teacher Effectiveness: An Exploration of Stability across Models and Contexts
Educational Policy Analysis Archives 9/20/10
Newton, X., Darling-Hammond, L., Haertel, E., & Thomas, E.

Los Angeles Unified School Board Endorses New Teacher Evaluation Principles
Including the Use of Value-Added Data as One Measure of Teacher Effectiveness
Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education 9/2/10

Go Behind the Scenes of L.A. Times' Teacher-Performance Project
Education Writers Association audioconference with journalists from the Los Angeles Times 9/2/10

Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers
Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper
Co-Authored by Scholars Convened by The Economic Policy Institute

Letter Report to the U.S. Department of Education on the Race to the Top Fund
Board on Testing and Assessment; National Research Council
Press Release
Full Report

Value-Added Measures of Education Performance: Clearing Away the Smoke and Mirrors
PACE Seminar 5/27/10
Douglas N. Harris, Associate Professor of Education Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin at Madison

A potential outcomes view of value-added assessment in education
Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, Spring 2004
Donald B. Rubin, Elizabeth A. Stuart, Elaine L. Zanutto

Participant Profiles

Panelists (listed alphabetically)

Anthony Cody is a mentor and leader of professional development for science teachers in the Oakland schools. He spent 18 years teaching science at Bret Harte Middle School, and was one of the District's first National Board certified teachers. He has led numerous grassroots projects among his fellow teachers, including the TeamScience mentoring program, and most recently, the Oakland Science/History Project-Based Learning Collaborative. A member of the Teacher Leaders Network, he has contributed to several significant national reports, including "Performance Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve," and "Measuring What Matters: The Effects of National Board Certification on Advancing 21st Century Teaching and Learning." He is a founding member of Accomplished California Teachers, and helped author their recent report, "A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: An Evaluation System
that Works for California."

His blog, "Living in Dialogue," is featured on Teacher Magazine, and he is the founder of a national group, Teachers' Letters to Obama, that has been active providing feedback to the Department of Education regarding its policies. He
graduated from UC Berkeley with a BS in Conservation and Resource Studies, and received his teaching credential from Berkeley's Graduate School of Education (Educational Research and its Applications program). He holds a Masters Degree in Secondary Science Education from San Jose State University.

Jason Felch is an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times. His work has been honored by Education Writers Association, the National Association of Science Writers, the Society for Environmental Journalism and others. In 2006 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for exposing the role of the J. Paul Getty Museum and other American museums in the black market for looted antiquities. His first book, Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum, will be released in April 2011. Prior to joining the Times in 2004, Jason was a fellow at the Center for Investigative Reporting and a freelance writer for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Legal Affairs, San Francisco Magazine, and the Colombia Journalism Review. His magazine article on money laundering by a former Ukrainian Prime Minister was selected for The Best American Crime Writing (2005). Jason received a bachelor’s in philosophy from Boston College and a masters in journalism from UC Berkeley. Before entering journalism, he was a teacher and founded an afterschool program for refugee teens in San Francisco. He currently lives in Pasadena, California with his wife and son.

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and his work on efficiency, resource usage, and economic outcomes of schools has frequently entered into the design of both national and international educational policy. His research spans such diverse areas as the impacts of teacher quality, high stakes accountability, and class size reduction on achievement and the role of cognitive skills in international growth and development. His pioneering analysis measuring teacher quality through student achievement forms the basis for current research into the value-added of teachers and schools. He is chairman of the Executive Committee for the Texas Schools Project at the University of Texas at Dallas, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. He currently serves as chair of the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences and is the area coordinator for Economics of Education of the CESifo Research Network.

Hanushek is the author of numerous books and widely-cited articles in professional journals. His newest book, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America's Public Schools, describes how improved school finance policies can be used to meet our achievement goals. He previously held academic appointments at the University of Rochester, Yale University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy as well as several government service posts. Hanushek is a member of the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education along with being a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and the American Education Research Association. He was awarded the Fordham Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in 2004. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1965?Äì1974.

Kyla Johnson-Trammell is principal of Oakland’s Sequoia Elementary School and the Student and Family Specialist for Oakland Unified School District?Äôs (OUSD) Region 1 and 2 schools. She received her Administrative Services Credential and M.A. from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education Principal Leadership Institute in 2003, and is currently a second-year doctoral student in the GSE’s Leadership for Educational Equity Program. Johnson-Trammell earned the Outstanding Principal of Alameda County in 2010 from the Beta Mu Chapter of Alpha Delta Kappa. She was also honored with OUSD’s inaugural Expect Success Award in 2007 for her distinguished contributions to Oakland Public Schools. The District awarded Sequoia its Blue Ribbon School award in 2008 for most test score gains for African American students, (whothen represented 40 percent of its 328 students). Besides rising scores on various achievement measures, Johnson-Trammell has helped establish Sequoia as an Arts Anchor Grant School with a focus on integrating visual arts into reading, writing and other curriculum objectives. Johnson-Trammell also spearheaded a garden project and other successful enrichment and intervention programs at Sequoia. A third-generation Oakland educator, Johnson-Trammell also taught in Oakland elementary schools and was an assistant principal in the Mt. Diablo School District before joining Sequoia in 2005.

Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge) was elected to the California State Senate in 2008. She represented the 44th Assembly District from 2000–06. Prior to her election to the State Assembly, Liu served eight years as a City Councilmember, including two terms as Mayor of La Cañada Flintridge. Liu was born in Berkeley and raised in Oakland. She graduated from San Jose State College and earned a lifetime teaching credential and an administrative credential from UC Berkeley and spent 17 years working in public schools.

Liu has authored many key pieces of legislation during her tenure in the Assembly, including bills to reinvigorate career and technical education at the high school level, lower the costs of college textbooks, protect foster children and prevent domestic violence. Her legislative agenda in the Senate includes improving public education and access to early childhood education, increasing access to higher education, and assuring essential services for the elderly, low-income and disabled. She is committed to breaking the cycles of poverty and crime. She is also working to improve environmental quality and access to public transportation. Her committee assignments include chairing the Senate Human Services Committee; the Education Subcommittee on Early Learning; the Budget Subcommittee on Education, and the Select Committee on Women and Children in the Criminal Justice System.

David Plank is the executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), an independent, non-partisan research center based at UC Berkeley, University of Southern California and Stanford University. Before joining PACE in January 2007, Plank was a Professor at Michigan State University, where he founded and directed the Education Policy Center. He was previously on the faculties at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he taught courses and conducted research in the areas of educational finance and policy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1983. Plank is the author or editor of six books, including the forthcoming American Education Research Association (AERA) Handbook on Educational Policy Research. He has published widely in a number of different fields including economics of education, history of education and educational policy. His current interests include the role of the state in education, and the relationship between academic research and public policy. In addition to his work in the United States, Plank has extensive international experience. He has served as a consultant to international organizations including the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Ford Foundation, as well as to governments in Africa and Latin America.

Sophia Rabe-Hesketh is a professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. She is an applied statistician who conducts methodological research in multilevel modeling and latent variable modeling. Models used for estimating teacher value added scores include multilevel models, also known as hierarchical linear models. She has co-authored
five books, including "Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling Using Stata" and "Generalized Latent Variable Modeling: Multilevel, Longitudinal, and Structural Equation models" (both with Anders Skrondal). Her methodological research is published in Psychometrika, Journal of Econometrics, and Biometrics, among others. Rabe-Hesketh serves on technical advisory boards for two large-scale educational assessment studies, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). She is also a member of the Interdepartmental Group in Biostatistics at UC Berkeley and has a part-time position as Professor of Social Statistics at the Department of Quantitative Social Science, Institute of Education, University of London, UK.

Susan Rasky is a Senior Lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. She was the congressional correspondent for The New York Times. A winner of a George Polk Award for National Reporting, she began her career in Washington, D.C., covering economic policy for the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. and later reported for Reuters from Capitol Hill and the White House. Rasky was a columnist and contributing editor for the California Journal as well as a frequent political commentator for the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee and NPR. She established and supervises the J-School’s California News Service, which gives students experience covering government and politics for news organizations throughout the country. She joined the School of Jounalism faculty in 1991. Rasky received her bachelor’s degree in history from the UC Berkeley and holds a master’s degree in economic history from the London School of Economics.

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). From 1999 to 2002 he was the national education columnist of the New York Times. He is the author of Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right (Teachers College Press and EPI, 2008) and Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap (Teachers College Press, 2004). He is also the author of The Way We Were? Myths and Realities of America's Student Achievement (1998). Other recent books include The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement (co-authored in 2005); and All Else Equal. Are Public and Private Schools Different? (co-authored in 2003).

Mark Wilson is a professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. A psychometrician, his interests focus on measurement and applied statistics. He was a member of the Testing and Assessment Panel of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences panel, which issued their report last year that cautioned against the heavy reliance on test scores for high stakes decisions such as pay, evaluation or tenure of teachers even when sophisticated value-added methods are used. Wilson's other work spans a range of issues in measurement and assessment from the development of new statistical models for analyzing measurement data, to the development of new assessments in subject matter areas such as science education, patient-reported outcomes and child development, to policy issues in the use of assessment data in accountability systems. He has recently published three books: the first, Constructing measures: An item response modeling approach (Erlbaum), is an introduction to modern measurement; the second (with Paul De Boeck of the University of Leuven in Belgium), Explanatory item response models: A generalized linear and nonlinear approach (Springer-Verlag), introduces an overarching framework for the statistical modeling of measurements that makes available new tools for understanding the meaning and nature of measurement; the third, Towards coherence between classroom assessment and accountability (University of Chicago Press—National Society for the Study of Education), is an edited volume that explores the issues relating to the relationships between large-scale assessment and classroom-level assessment. He currently chairs a National Research Council committee on assessment of science achievement. He is founding editor of the new journal: Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives.

Moderator

Louis Freedberg is a senior reporter focusing on education issues for California Watch, which he co-founded and directed until May 2010. Before that, Freedberg was director of the California Media Collaborative, based at the Commonwealth Club of California, which joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting in May 2009. Until August 2007, Freedberg worked at the San Francisco Chronicle in a variety of roles: columnist and member of its editorial board; Washington correspondent during the presidency of Bill Clinton; and higher-education reporter. He was a senior editor at Pacific News Service, where he established and directed Pacific Youth Press. He was the founder and director of Youth News in Oakland, which trained high school students as radio-news reporters. He has written and reported for a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and National Public Radio. He has reported from diverse regions of the world, including Southern Africa, the former Soviet Union and Central America. Freedberg was the recipient of a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University and an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship. He has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in psychology from Yale University.

Press Availability
Media representatives may meet with participants immediately before and after the forum, at 1 pm and 4:30 pm.

Contact
For event information, contact Steven Cohen or (510) 642-0137.
For media information and RSVPs, contact Kathleen Maclay or (510) 643-5651.

return to gsE-bulletin

return to News