Frank Denton, the Times Union should be one sided when it comes to teacher evaluations

This is what he seems to be saying at least when he sent me the following e-mail:

Your email got into the paper without me catching it, but be aware that we are not suing for teacher evaluations.  We are suing for the value-added data that is only half of the teach evaluation.  It's hard data.

You notice how he wrote hard data, not accurate data? It’s like getting things right means nothing to him. This was my response.

I'll make sure I mention that on my blog, but you should also know bad data is bad data, and I hope you mention that a lot of teachers VAM score is school based and not a reflection of what they are doing. If you want I can send you many links about how standardized tests aren't
supposed to be used to evaluate and the problems with the VAM itself.

To which he responded:

As I said in the paper, putting all this data in the sunshine will allow the public to make that judgment. And of course, we will continue to cover this controversy, all sides.

I will address all sides tomorrow but for now think about the lack of background and context he is proposing. If I talked about a baseball player that failed 667 times out of a thousand people might think he should be looking for a new job while at the same time general managers might want to pay him millions of dollars. That’s teaching folks in a nutshell but please forgive me if I am not sold, especially after his track record that Frank Denton is going to clue you into that fact.