Researchers and innovators have access to testing data, unless USOE doesn’t want to release it to them…then they’ll throw up bureaucratic roadblocks and bump you from person to person until you either give up, or getting the data loses its relevance simply due to time lapse. How do I know this? First hand experience.

Like any bureaucratic agency, USOE cares about how it and the system it oversees is perceived. And if they think your use of the data won’t caste them (or the public education system) in a positive light, they will take advantage of the system to try to prevent you from getting the data, because the system gives them power to do so. Again, I’m only saying this because I’ve experienced it for myself. Researchers and innovators are not made equal in the mind of Utah’s education overseers.

Derek Monson

Researchers and innovators already have access to testing data. School community councils (which include many parents) also have access to this information. Publishing individual class information would serve no purpose.

So, according to you, Utah shouldn’t shouldn’t be publicly release public school classroom information because some parents don’t raise their children very well? I don’t see the connection between parenting responsibilities and the need for government to be transparent with taxpayers in regards to things those taxpayers are paying for.

Your argument sounds more like an argument against using test scores as the primary basis for teacher pay or tenure decisions. If that’s the case, then we actually agree with you, and have advocated that position repeatedly over the years (i.e. advocated for a comprehensive system of performance reviews to pay teachers and determine tenure, including things like test scores, fellow-teacher evaluations, principal evaluations, evaluations from involved parents, etc.).

But again, none of this has to do with transparency. Transparency is just a basic aspect of good government in a representative democracy such as ours.

Derek Monson

I would refer you back to the blog post. Specifically, the paragraph that starts “beyond all of these policy considerations…”

Derek Monson

To answer your question, one way to release classroom
level information without violating the law against releasing individual
evaluation data is to simply not attach a teacher’s name to the
publicly available version of their classroom’s average scores, instead
using some kind of id number for each teacher that doesn’t change from
one year to the next – much like we track many pieces of information on many people over time. The state has taken this exact approach in
publishing financial information on transparent.utah.gov when an
individual’s identity must by law be protected (e.g. Medicaid payments
to individual Medicaid recipients).

But the more important point
which you didn’t touch, and the real point of my blog post, is that the
focus of this policy discussion (and most other education policy
discussions) should be what is in the best interest of children, rather
than things like the privacy of public school teachers. Of course you
have to follow the law, but nothing in the law says that the school
board should or must put the interest of adults (teacher privacy) above
the best interests of children (giving education entrepreneurs and
researchers easy access to tools to help improve education practice in
Utah, to the benefit of every child in the state’s public schools).

The
real point is that instead of trying to take a real stand for the best
interests of children by publicly releasing information that could help
improve their education, the school board instead wanted to follow an
approach that compromised the interests of children to the interests of
adults in the system, before they backed away from doing anything due to
legal confusion. This has nothing to do with what the law says or
doesn’t say in this case. It has everything to do with how many (though not all) decision
makers approach public education in the state: talking about the best
interests of children while acting in the interest of adults at the
expense of children.

Derek Monson

Craig Coleman
Utah State Board of Education

Chief among those are the effectiveness of parenting by parents of students. A teacher has no way of controlling effort on the part of students. If parents fail to support and see that homework is completed, or provide a home environment that values — instead of denigrating — education there is no way a teacher, no matter how good or bad, may overcome that kind of influence. Education, by its very nature, must be at least a two-way partnership between the teacher and students. In elementary, middle and even high school, it must be a three-way partnership that includes parents.

Disclosure of statistics at a classroom level would be valid only if the teacher were taking the students home every night to be able to control the climate at home. It would work only if the teacher could dictate bedtimes. Determine how much TV is watched or video games are played in the home.

How about setting up an evaluation of parents by teachers? If classroom statistics are to be published, how about including the names and grades of individual students and their parents?

I can tell you from experience that even good teachers may sometimes be dealt students who are impossible to teach. I’ve seen excellent teachers go from being highly successful one year to “failure” the next. But the failure was not the doing of the teacher.

Other teachers know full well who the poor teachers are. It would be much more realistic to find a way to force lackadaisical administrators to do their jobs and get rid of the poor teachers. I often advocated a system which would eliminate the principal and replace him or her with a committee of classroom teachers to handle educational administration in a school. Instead of a principal supervising all aspects of school operations, turn the school secretary (who does most of the real work in the office anyway) into a business manager who is paid what she is really worth.