The National Education Policy Center today published a report critical of the Los Angeles Times study used to publicly evaluate teachers (see The Best Posts About The LA Times Article On “Value-Added” Teacher Ratings).

The study reports:

The research on which the Los Angeles Times relied for its August 2010 teacher effectiveness reporting was demonstrably inadequate to support the published rankings. Using the same L.A. Unified School District data and the same methods as the Times, this study probes deeper and finds the earlier research to have serious weaknesses.

Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post wrote a summary of the report at New study: How L.A. Times teachers data is flawed.

The same Times reporter who wrote the original report then turned around and wrote an article headlined Separate study confirms many Los Angeles Times findings on teacher effectiveness.

The National Education Policy Center then released a lengthy response later in the day to the Times’ article, including words like “misleading” and “red herring.” It offered a detailed analysis of how The Times was misinterpreting their report.

I’m adding all of these links to “The Best…” list about the LA Times fiasco I mentioned earlier in this post