Teacher's Union Leader Upset by the Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - On Sunday, August 15^th A.J. Duffy, President of the teacher's union, United Teachers Los Angeles, ignited a turf war with the LA Times newspaper over the children of the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District).

In reaction to a recently published article in The Times that analyzes the effectiveness of 6,000+ teachers by the test scores their students receive, Duffy decided to organize a "massive boycott" of the newspaper. Duffy claims that by basing analyses off standardized test scores, "you're leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by... a test."

This statement is at best misguided, and at worst misleading--in both cases, it's ridiculous. Test scores are not the end-all be-all of a teacher's ability, or of a student's performance for that matter, but they are certainly one of the very few tools we have to assess both student and teacher. So, to act as if tests are hardly relevant is bass ackwards. A child's entire education is ultimately qualified by a series of tests, and the study the newspaper used was based off of 7 years' worth of data! Mister, don't try to tell me a meaningful follow up on that much data is a "dangerous direction."

Further responding to the newspaper's intent to publish an online database rating those 6,000+ teachers, Duffy says that it's "an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning." The insult here is that the Los Angeles Times spent who-knows-how-much of its resources to carefully piece together a rational assessment of a system that clearly has its cracks, and the President of UTLA dismisses it all with a non-specific, non-factual, and non-constructive claim. This is unproductive fear mongering at its best--antithetical to the nature of journalism.

Let's just get one thing straight: being a teacher of kids who can't fend for themselves automatically voids your right to what Duffy might call, "professional privacy." The citizens, and most importantly the children's parents have a right to know who is teaching their kids, and how well those teachers are doing. Even Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education sided with the newspaper. Among many other things, willfully bearing public scrutiny of one's day-to-day work is what makes teaching a noble profession.

It's clear the Union leader would rather keep all regulatory checks arbitrary so that defenses can be made even for ineffective teachers, thus perpetuating the Union's role in protecting its members under most circumstances. Unless A.J. Duffy is a total fool (I highly doubt this), it's not about doing what's right for the kids, it's about securing his job.

To conclude, I will grant those opposed to the article one argument: it has been a point of controversy that the newspaper specifically used the names of two teachers (also providing the name of the high school they both taught at) in its original article to strike a contrast between effective, and ineffective. Unfortunately, names have to be named if you want anyone to be held accountable, but I don't think it was necessary for The Times to have singled out the bad teacher in the article-it was actually quite inconsiderate when fabricated identities would have worked just fine. Just don't let that misdirect you, though: error as this may have been, it's no grounds for the boycott of the newspaper. Not when its larger public service of straight journalism has been fulfilled.