A battle that erupted in Los Angeles this summer over the public release of teacher ratings is flaring in New York this week and could become prominent in the debate over school reform efforts nationwide.

On Wednesday, New York City education officials announced plans to provide news organizations ratings on teachers that are derived from calculations on how much year-to-year progress their students make on standardized tests.

But on Thursday, a city education spokeswoman said, officials put that plan on hold for several weeks while a state court considers a teachers union petition to block the release.

“We think the public has a right to the information,” city education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said. She said the ratings are used in tenure and other personnel decisions.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement: “I give New York credit for sharing this information with teachers so they can improve and get better. I also think that parents and community members have the right to know how their districts, schools, principals and teachers are doing. It’s up to local communities to set the context for these courageous conversations but silence is not an option.”

The United Federation of Teachers, which is the New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, filed a lawsuit Thursday in state court seeking to block the release.

In August, the Los Angeles Times began publishing a series of articles based on its analysis of test score data linked to 6,000 elementary teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Those stories and a searchable database named individual teachers in the nation’s second-largest school district and examined how much — or how little — they raised student test scores over time.

 

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