The Times Union’s self-serving excuse for bad behavior.

The Times Union has tried to justify their release of VAM data by saying the public needed to see the scores so they could make a judgment for themselves. But you know there were better ways of informing the public than dragging the states 125 thousand teachers over the coals. They could have talked to mathematicians and education policy experts to see what they had to say. The Times Union could have also looked at other places where VAM scores were used. And if they had done either of those things they would have learned very quickly that the use of VAM data was going to be a disaster.

I also wonder how many subscriptions the Times Union sold the week they put the VAM data on their website. My bet since the department of education didn’t put the scores up on their site and a quick check of a dozen major newspapers from around the state show they didn’t either is more than a few and this makes their half hearted attempt to justify their behavior all the more disingenuous.

So the Times Union can try and justify its destructive behavior all it wants but at the end of the day the information was available without harming teachers. The information you can only see if you give the TU its thirty pieces of silver.