Firstly, I have read the link to the LA Times article in its entirety. Have you? In the Q and A section we read the following:
Q: Do value added scores tell you everything you need to know about a teacher or school?
A: Not at all. Even advocates of the method say it should count for half or less of a teacher's overall evaluation. In reviewing a teacher's performance, ad- ministrators may want to consider their classroom evaluations...
This last suggestion is actually what I am contending for. Teachers should be
evaluated and held to professional standards. (By the way, teacher's unions
have no argument with this no matter how many times Paenme and Freetrader say otherwise.) These evaluations should be based on observations
by other pedagogical professionals-as they have been since time immemorial.
So you see, I am not actually shirking responsibility and saying teachers should never be held accountable. I am saying they should be held accountable in a way that is consistent with common sense.
Furthermore, I should point out that, according to the LA Times article, the value-added methodology has a margin of error of 5 percent for some subjects and as much as 7 percent for others between the 20th and 80th percentiles of teachers. Whether this is a minor detail is a question upon which reasonable minds can disagree.
Also, we should take a skeptical look at the implied premise behind the publication of these data by The LA Times, namely, that public servants who have responsibility for modifying other peoples' behavior should be held accountable by the general public on the basis of their success or failure in so doing. Does this argument apply to low-ranking soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Does it also apply to police officers and prison guards? How about low-ranking officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the DEA, the ATF, and the INS? Don't they too, then, share some part of the blame for policy failures in those areas?