Yesterday, the LA Times announced it would be publicly releasing a database that measures the effectiveness of more than 6,000 elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District next month. Through an analysis known as “value-added”, the Times will use the math and English scores of students from the year prior to project what the student’s performance should be in the future. It will then compare the actual performance to that projection to calculate the “value” the specific teacher added or subtracted overall to a student’s academic gain.

Measuring performance on the value add alone is not, and should not, be the only way to evaluate effectiveness. However, this analysis will shed some light on data that has been collected by the school district for years but never used – and helps to illustrate the importance of how an effective teacher year after year greatly benefits a student’s academic achievement level.

Value add is gaining nation-wide attention, and just last month the Washington, D.C. public schools Chancellor used a similar metric as one component to remove a few dozen ineffective teachers from the school system completely. In fact, many of the Race to the Top state finalists have also begun discussions on changing their teacher evaluation systems to include value added metrics to produce a more robust and comprehensive system when measuring effectiveness.

Most of us can recall a great teacher that impacted our learning tremendously. Hopefully the LA Unified School District can use this information combined with other metrics to ensure that all students will get the education they deserve.