Los Angeles: California Supreme Court allows redactions of teacher names in reporting test scores

The California Supreme Court left standing a lower court ruling in favor of the Los Angeles Unified School District, allowing them to continue to redact teachers’ names in releasing statistics on job performance. State courts had found that the public interest in keeping names redacted outweighed the interest in disclosing scores with teachers’ names. The Los Angeles Times had long sought disclosure of the names.  (Metropolitan News-Enterprise, November 13, 2014, by a MetNews Staff Writer)

A three judge state appellate court had ruled that keeping the names from the public did not violate the California Public Records Act. The district superintendent claimed releasing names would undermine teacher morale and hurt the district’s ability to hire and retain teachers. (LA School Report, November 13, 2014, by Craig Clough)