Los Angeles teachers agree to student test scores in evaluations

L.A. teachers union members OK new evaluation method

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Teachers in Los Angeles have agreed to have test scores factored into performance evaluations in the nation's second-largest school district, their union said on Saturday in a concession to a growing national movement to revamp teacher appraisals.

United Teachers Los Angeles said in a statement that 66 percent of the nearly 17,000 members who cast ballots had voted in favor of the new agreement on evaluations. The union has more than 30,000 members in a district second in size only to New York.


The question of how best to evaluate teachers - and how districts can remove failing ones - has sparked clashes across the country between school officials and teachers' unions. One such disagreement was behind last year's seven-day teacher strike in Chicago.

A tentative agreement had been reached late last year between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the teachers' union over evaluations, after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant ruled that test scores had to be a part of teacher evaluations.

The agreement between the district and the union called for teachers to be evaluated based on a number of factors, including test scores, attendance and graduation rates, Los Angeles Unified said in a statement last year.