Yesterday, I posted about the Los Angeles Times decision to publicly rank 11,500 more teachers (see L.A. Times Releases Their Ratings Of 11,500 More Teachers Today). In their article announcing the new rankings, the paper wrote about a letter they received from leaders of the LA Unified School District, Chamber of Commerce and other groups asking them not to publish their analysis of each teacher.

Today, Alexander Russo (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: he writes a “must-read” blog) asked the Times for a copy of the letter, but the paper refused because of privacy concerns: “”The letter is not a public document and we are unable to provide it to you.”

And they used that reason with a straight face….

Alexander obtained a copy of the letter elsewhere, and I’d encourage you to visit his blog to read the whole thing.

Here’s an excerpt:

On behalf of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, all signatories to the L.A. Compact, we urgently request that the Los Angeles Times give serious consideration to not publicly release individual teacher “value-added” or academic growth over time (AGT) ratings.

(Valerie Strauss also wrote a good post today about the Times’ decision)