'Los Angeles Times' Education Rankings Anger Teachers, Unions

toggle caption Robyn Beck/AFP

As part of an investigative series, "Grading the Teachers: Value-Added Analysis," the Los Angeles Times published "a database of about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade [Los Angeles Unified School District] teachers ranked by their effectiveness in raising student test scores."

Parents can search for their child's teacher or school, or browse the "top 100 value-added teachers," sorted alphabetically," or see a list of the "top value-added schools."

(For an explanation of the newspaper's methodology, to understand what "value-added means," click here.)

Many teachers are unhappy with the analysis. Several teachers unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and United Teachers Los Angeles, criticized the Times.

On ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, said "we're all trying to figure out how to make teaching -- which has always been an art -- into an art and a science, which is why data is really important."