Friday, February 24, 2012

We Should Be More Aggressive with the FOIA Requests

Gary Rubenstein:

Today, the day of the release of the New York City data, I received an email that I did not expect to come for at least a year. In D.C. the evaluation process is called IMPACT. About 500 teachers in D.C. belong to something called ‘group one’ which means that they teach something that can be measure with their value-added formula. 50% of their evaluation is based on their IVA (individual value-added), 35% is on their principal evaluation called their TLF (teaching and learning framework). 5% is on their SVA (school value added) and the remaining 10% on their CSC (commitment to school and community). I wanted to test my theory that the value-added scores would not correlate with the principal evaluations so I had applied under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) to D.C. schools requesting the principal evaluation scores and the value-added scores for all group one teachers (without their names.) I fully expected to wait about a year or two and then be denied. To my surprise, it only took a few months and they did provide a 500 row spreadsheet.

No comments: