Teachers Protest L.A. Times Over Evaulations

By Don Irvine —— Bio and Archives September 18, 2010

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The L.A. Unified School District Teachers Union made good on their promise to protest the Los Angeles Times over the papers release of evaluations of over 6,000 teachers in the district.

From FishbowlLA

The controversy surrounding the LA Times' decision to publish an online database of teachers' effectiveness isn't going away any time soon. Yesterday, hundreds of teachers from the LA Unified School District gathered outside the Times' downtown headquarters in protest. "I feel, in a way, betrayed," Lee Bartoletti of Ivanhoe Elementary School in Silver Lake told a Times reporter. "The Times has reneged on its mission of telling the truth." The protest was organized by the union United Teachers Los Angeles, which has also called for a boycott of the paper. The UTLA website didn't have much to say on the matter, posting only a sentence or two about the protest. "Members give the L.A. Times a consistent grade: F."

The union tried using the protest as a way to spin their story that the Times' release of the teacher evaluation data was the equivalent of leaking classified government documents. What they are really mad about is that the scoring of the teachers shows that there are below grade teachers in the system and that children aren't always getting the best education possible. The unions are in the business of protecting their members at any cost and the thought of actually holding teachers accountable for student performance is an anathema to them Kudos to the Times for standing up to the union and giving the children in Los Angeles a chance at a better education.