“Value-added scores are meant to show the effect a teacher has on his or her students’ test scores. The methodology attempts to isolate the teacher’s role and make comparisons among teachers by statistically controlling for various factors among their students, such as ethnicity, disabilities, and socioeconomic status.”

“While the data might be useful for broad policy decisions or even as one factor in personnel decisions, publishing it with individual names attached is problematic, says Jeffrey Henig, an education and political science professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. For one, he says, what will district officials do if parents start requesting that their students be placed in the classrooms of higher-scoring teachers”

“More broadly, Professor Henig says, ‘we’ve got some major issues of teacher recruitment and retention as a society…. How attractive a career will it [be] if each year teachers have a score hung around their neck, with parents and others invited to take shots at them?'”