Does the release of information on 18,000 educators really increase transparency, or does it open the door for unprofessional -- and misleading -- statistical analysis?

Following a court challenge last year by several media outlets, the New York City Department of Education -- which operates the nation's largest school district -- agreed to release individual evaluation rankings for 18,000 of its teachers. The New York Times is publishing its analysis of the data, including the teachers' names and their school assignments. GothamSchools, an independent online publication, has opted out, citing significant concerns about both the fairness and the accuracy of the data.

Indeed, there is potentially a wide margin of error. The final scores for teachers could be off on average by as much as 35 or 53 percentage points for English and math exams, respectively, the New York Times reported.