Miami-Dade County Public Schools has a long history of inviting the examination of our efforts to improve service to the community. We’ve been under the microscopes of prominent national organizations such as the Broad Prize, which this year, for the fourth time, named our district as a finalist — one of four among 15,000 school districts nationwide; the College Board, which lauded our Advanced Placement success; and the Council of the Great City Schools, which presented us just last week with the coveted Award for Excellence in Financial Management.

That is why the recent report titled “Teacher Quality Roadmap: Improving Policies and Practices in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools,” by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), seemed so out of place.

Miami-Dade agreed to participate in the study in the spirit of continued self-reflection, transparency, and improvement, and at its inception, this study enjoyed the support of a number of community partners including the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and the Beacon Council. Both of those organizations have since withdrawn their support of the study because something was amiss.

Observers have noted that the NCTQ’s report was more than two years in the making, an extraordinary amount of time during which the organization never visited a Miami-Dade classroom, but attempted to render an opinion about teacher effectiveness. During those two years, so much has changed in Miami-Dade’s public schools. Student achievement has improved dramatically. FCAT scores and school performance grades have advanced steadily, our graduation rate is the highest in history, and we’re producing students who are well-prepared for college and the world of work. The district has been recognized as a national leader for two years in a row on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

“Bad” teachers do not deliver results like these. These are the results of a strong teaching staff, one that is constantly being evaluated using effective data-measurement systems and practices. Not captured in the study is the fact that M-DCPS has led the way in the state with the Florida Department of Education having approved new teacher and school-site administrator performance evaluation systems. New evaluations provide for 50 percent of the professional’s annual evaluation to be based on student performance indicators.

We use student output to measure teacher effectiveness with monthly data reviews with school principals.

These reviews have been especially effective in our most challenged schools, where some high schools have moved from ratings of F to A in under three years. At an exit interview, the Broad Prize examiners praised the district specifically for our collection and effective use of data to boost student achievement, which the recent report ignored.

Can the school district improve? Always.

The report recommended a list of changes, the majority of which require statutory changes by the state or lengthy collective bargaining negotiations, and the truth is, they are not going to happen overnight.

The report points to other districts, recommending that Miami-Dade follow models like Washington, D.C. For the record, D.C. fired a large percentage of its teachers, only to be forced to hire back many of them. That just doesn’t work for us; we don’t gloat about firing people. We don’t want to travel the same journey as some of these school districts.

More important, some of the districts highlighted by this report rank significantly lower than Miami-Dade in the one element that defines our work: student achievement.

Miami-Dade is an outcome-driven organization, while the report followed an input-heavy approach.

The process of dismissing a teacher for performance in Florida is an onerous one, and in the majority of cases, administrative law judges in our state return teachers to the classroom. Miami-Dade has incorporated different means for separating employees from their positions, through counseling, resignations and non-reappointment.

M-DCPS continues to lead the nation in increasing student achievement, delivering data-driven professional development, and implementing teacher pay for performance. The success of our ground-breaking initiatives has been achieved in close collaboration with our teachers. This district’s unflinching focus on student outcomes and student learning is proof that we are dedicated to what is most important to our community’s future — student success.

Notwithstanding this success, we remain committed to continually striving to improve our district’s practice.

Enid Weisman is assistant superintendent for human resources and labor relations at Miami-Dade County Public Schools.