The United Federation of Teachers attempt to keep teacher test results away from the public is not going so well. Yesterday a judge ruled that New York City can absolutely disclose the names of public school teachers along with their grades. Just don't expect to see that info anytime soon since, naturally, the UFT is appealing.
The grades in question are technically called Teacher Data Reports (TDRs) and focus on the progress students under a particular teacher made on standardized tests (and they can, in fact, have issues!). They currently exist for more than 12,000 of the city's 80,000 public school teachers and, though Bloomberg wants them used in tenure discussions, the UFT has been desperate to keep them out of the public sphere.
The UFT has argued that TDRs are not reliable and therefore not worthy of the public's attention. In a statement after the ruling Michael Mulgrew, the UFT's president, still argued that the reports "have huge margins of error and are filled with inaccuracies" and "will only serve to mislead parents looking for real information." But the judge in the matter disagreed, writing "there is no requirement that data be reliable for it to be disclosed."
Further, the judge pointed out that "this information is of interest to parents, students, taxpayers and the public generally." Sure, though it would be of more interest if the info was dependable.
Anyway, good info or bad, these reports will someday see the light of day. Just first the case has a few more rounds of appeals to work through.
