If ensuring the quality of teaching in public schools were a
perfect science, you’d think that officials would have figured
it out by now: since the enactment of the sweeping federal No
Child Left Behind law, teachers have been measured, graded and
ranked by all kinds of metrics, from demographic trends to
standardized test scores. And yet we can’t seem to find that
elusive numeric solution to the crisis in public
education—possibly because complex social problems can’t be
reduced to averages and bell curves. But the fuzzy math hasn’t
stopped New York City from publishing data reports for some
18,000 public school teachers: ratings based on convoluted
performance measurements measures for reading and math classes
in the fourth through eighth grades. While officials pit the
public’s supposed “right to know” against teachers’ privacy
rights (a similar political controversy exploded in 2010 over
teacher data for Los Angeles schools), the data hasn’t done much
to enhance public understanding of what’s going on in