Dive Brief:
- In a new ruling, a circuit court judge in Richmond, VA has said Loudoun County Public Schools must release all student growth percentile scores.
- The ruling settles a lawsuit that was filed in 2014 by Brian Davison, a parent from the district, requesting data he said would better illustrate a student's progress while also identifying teacher performance.
- According to Loudon Now, Davison is plan to publish the information about teacher performance on a VirginiaSGP Facebook page.
Dive Insight:
There are a few major concerns here: making proprietary information public and then using that data to measure something it may not be able to accurately assess.
Loudoun County Public Schools and the Loudoun Education Association worry releasing teacher performance data will unfairly target teachers whose students show low progress rates.
Davison believes releasing the data will help the public identify the most effective teachers. The information has been collected by teachers and schools since 2011, yet it's contentious.
Education Dive previously reported the Loudoun info only tracks math and reading, "so teachers in other subjects are wrongly held to growth in areas that they didn't necessarily teach." Not onl that, the data "only relies on test scores, not even teacher evaluations and other factors, which is why so many educators and their allies are troubled by what could happen if the growth data is released."