On the sad death of Rigoberto Ruelas.
Who knows why someone would take their own life? They are not here to explain.
We do know that on Sunday Rigoberto Ruelas jumped from a bridge in the Angeles National Forest.
Mr. Ruelas was a teacher and lived in the working class LA community of South Gate. He taught fifth grade at Miramonte Elementary School.
South Gate ain’t Beverly Hills.
It is poor. Many of Miramonte’s students are immigrants with English as a second language. Like many schools, I’m sure that teaching at Miramonte was a joy and a challenge.
When the LA Times published value added scores of LA teachers, they labeled Mr. Ruelas “less effective.” The publishing of these scores was a humiliation. I believe that is what it was intended to be.
Had the LA Times reporters met Mr. Ruelas? Did they visit his classroom? Did they talk to his neighbors? He lived only six blocks from Miramonte. Did they talk, or play or have lunch with his students?
Who was he “less effective” than?
Today many LA teachers will wear black arm bands in memory of their colleague, Rigoberto Ruelas.
This is so tragic.
I actually have to parse your comments, though, Fred. I don’t think it’s the reporters’ place to visit the classroom and pass judgment on the teacher — which the L.A. Times reporters DID do in the case of the teachers they shamed most vigorously, with big pictures and descriptions of the reporters’ opinions of their teaching effectiveness.
Publishing the names along with the value-added data is bad enough, given that the value-added data is overwhelmingly discredited as a sound way to measure teacher effectiveness. I personally think it would be even worse for the Times to do more of what they are absolutely unqualified to do — assess and evaluate teacher effectiveness based on their own whimsical and uninformed observation.
Both are unacceptable. They go beyond being “the messenger” to being “the judge.” That is not the place of the news media.
I attended a panel discussion of the project at UC-Berkeley yesterday (which included Times reporter Jason Felch). The only panelist who didn’t strongly criticize the validity of the entire project was Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, and even he damned it with faint praise. He agreed that value-added is not a valid measure of teacher effectiveness, that it would only be sound in identifying the teachers at the “very bottom,” and that administrators would already know which teachers were at the “very bottom.”
One panelist was UC-Berkeley Grad School of Journalism prof Susan Rasky, who was Jason Felch’s professor. I should qualify that she didn’t really criticize the entire project, but that she opposed printing the teachers’ names and said that would have argued against it.
I think you parse too much.
Of course, reporters shouldn’t be doing performance evaluations of teachers.
But, in fact they didn’t know the teachers in any professional, human or humane sense. Aside from the issue of formal evaluation, which in this case is most certainly beside the point, they didn’t know the teachers at all.
If a kid or group of kids gang up on another child in school, there is supposed to be intervention and consequences and mediation and all sorts of programs to preserve the self-respect of the picked-on kid, and to teach social/ethical lessons to the bullies.
The LA Times is behaving like the class bully, targeting individuals for humiliation–blindsiding educators who are doing their best in difficult conditions. Small wonder the Times can push someone over the edge. It’s a bully, pure and simple, throwing its weight around. Because it can get away with it.
Where is the intervention? If a student behaved in this manner, we would assume he/she was sorely short on of empathy and/or ethical boundaries, and we would even be on the lookout for sociopathic tendencies. Who’s going to send the LA Times to the principal’s office and at least call its parents?
Yes, I understand and agree that they were ignoring the human element in a spectacularly callous way. I just wanted to add my view that they shouldn’t be doing evaluation based on personal observation at all.
At yesterday’s UC-Berkeley panel, Richard Rothstein said something that I’ve thought myself — the press supposedly commits to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” In this case they are afflicting those who are already under fire for doing challenging work under difficult conditions. That violates what is supposed to be their commitment.
Agreed.
Evaluations should not be used as judgment against a teacher but as a confidential tool that can be used by faculty to improve their performance. They should be mentored by someone in their school or department who can help them access the course material and teaching methods. Teachers should not be dismissed and demeaned in a public manner. Much thought needs to be given to the evaluative process.