LAUSD Revamps Teacher Evaluations

Los Angeles - The Los Angeles Unified School District has taken the first step to revamp the teacher evaluation process. It includes the use of the controversial value added data that will allow parents to know how their child will be doing.

FOX 11's Gigi Graciette has the story in the video report.

Story Script:

After months of discussions, recommendations and criticism, LA Unified unveiled step one of a new student, school and teacher evaluation system called academic growth over time.

Dr. John Deasy/Supt-Elect, LAUSD
"This is much more than just a test score. What it is is this is how students have done over time on numerous assessments, understanding all of the conditions that can affect student learning."

Using scores from standardized tests on english and math , the school district will measure how a student and a school progresses from year to year... their achievement and growth.

Those numbers will eventually be used, among other measures, to evaluate a teacher's performance.

Noah Bookman/LAUSD
"This is new information that teachers have never had before about how they are doing compared to other teachers."

The program won't be implemented until the 2012-2013 school year, and the use of value added data to evaluate teachers still needs to be agreed on by the teachers union.

One thing that has been decided is that an individual teachers score will never be made public to anyone but the district and the teacher.

Dr. John Deasy/Supt-Elect, LAUSD
"There is relationship that is special between the employer and the employee around some information which we don't share with the public and that is something we have decided to."

Starting on April 13th, parents and anyone else who's interested can access the academic growth over time results for individual schools at http://agt.lausd.net