WASHINGTON — The union representing D.C. public educators says that language tucked into the District’s budget bill would prevent the public and the union alike from accessing teacher evaluation results, but city officials dispute that saying the wording applies only to charter schools.
The Washington Teachers’ Union has a lawsuit pending against D.C. government related to teacher evaluations and the language included in the budget bill would block the union from accessing the information they need for that case, says union President Elizabeth Davis.
In a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser, Davis argues that existing public information law exemptions allow the District to redact personal information that would connect teachers with their evaluation but still make the net results available for review.
The collective data should be made public in order to assess whether changes to teacher evaluations have been effective as well as how they influence administrators’ decisions regarding school closures and teacher assignments, Davis argues.
“I’m concerned about why the council is so adamant about protecting this data,” Davis says.
But Councilman David Grosso, who chairs the council’s education committee, says the language would only apply to charter schoolteachers, who were involved in debates related to the changes months ago. The draft language would make permanent an existing, but temporary law, that already exempts charter schools’ staff from the District’s public information law.
He says the wording has been well-vetted and is likely to remain intact when the budget is given final approval.
“DCPS teachers are already exempt from (the public information law). All their personnel information is exempt,” Grosso says.
The union, which Grosso says opposes school reforms and doesn’t like the current teacher evaluation system, should simply ask its members to submit their own individual evaluation results so the union can compile its own set of data.
“I think what they are trying to do is expose the weaknesses and trying to show that this doesn’t work,” he says. “I don’t think that’s the best way to go about doing it.”
The union also questions why the language, which would add an exemption to the city’s freedom of information law, isn’t debated as a stand-alone bill separate from the budget.
Grosso says he would have pulled the wording from the budget bill and debated it separately if the union had raised its concerns sooner into the process.
“They had five hearings where they could have raised this with us,” he says.
WTOP’s Kristi King contributed to this report.
