The Teachers Union’s Fight Against Release of Rankings

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - March 1st, 2012

The Teacher Data Reports were released last Friday after a long legal battle to suppress the results.  The teachers’ union of New York City, the United Federation of Teachers, has attacked the reports, which rank teachers based on standardized test results, and criticize their “wide margin of error.”

The Federation has launched a media campaign against the results of the Report that will run in this week’s New York Times.  This comes after the loss of a year and half-long legal battle in which the union sued to stop the release of the reports, arguing that they were inaccurate and their public release would violate teachers’ right to privacy.

Parents looking to check out their child’s teacher’s rankings can do so by entering the school’s name in the search bar at the New York Times SchoolBook blog.  SchoolBook provides the Teacher Data Report rankings as well as individual explanations and reactions to the results by the teachers themselves.