The New York Times released “value-added” data for 18,000 elementary school teachers in New York City recently, joining the Los Angeles Times, which released data for LA teachers last year. But unlike in LA, the New York Times allowed the data itself to be released, allowing analysts to really dive in and look at the performance assessments and whether or not they make sense. They found the data is useless as a measure of teacher performance.

The Education Department plans to grant waivers for the No Child Left Behind law to states and school districts that “embrace reform.” This bypasses Congressional reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, and allows states and districts to get out from under the onerous burdens of the law, which has a deadline for 100% proficiency in reading and math by 2013-14, and which would close down schools that did not comply.