Should teachers’ data be kept private?

Slate ran an article defending several media outlets in New York that want to publish, with the support of Mayor Bloomberg's education department, value-added assessment data of the city's teachers. As Slate notes, this "data ranks fourth through eighth grade math and English teachers, purportedly based on how much progress their students have made on standardized tests from year to year."

Value-added is a controversial way of evaluating teachers because the results are just estimations; in reality, a teacher's rank falls within a percentile range that is often very large. To learn more, read the full article by Seyward Darby in the Opinion section of the NPR website.