The Los Angeles Times got complaints from teachers nationwide last month when it published a database of teachers ranked by their effectiveness in raising student test scores.

At the time, the teachers union in Los Angeles said in a statement: "It is the height of journalistic irresponsibility to make public these deeply flawed judgments about a teacher's effectiveness."

The union has renewed its protest, saying a teacher -- Rigoberto Ruelas Jr. -- may have committed suicide this past Sunday because of his low ranking.

Christina Hoag of the Associated Press reports:

The motive for Ruelas taking his own life is far from clear. But union officials said he had been upset since the Times published his district ranking as a "less effective" teacher based on his students' standardized English and math test scores...

...In a statement, the newspaper extended its condolences to the family and said it published the database "because it bears directly on the performance of public employees who provide an important service, and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to judge the data for themselves."

...The union protested in front of the newspaper's downtown headquarters and called for a boycott of the Times, which published the rankings as part of a push for a better method to evaluate teacher effectiveness.

On Aug. 30, the day after the database was published, Jason Song of the Los Angeles Times reported about the teacher complaints. From that article:

The database is part of a Times series that rated teachers by using a "value-added" analysis based on seven years of standardized test scores obtained from the Los Angeles Unified School District. The value-added method looks at previous student test performance and estimates how much a teacher added to or subtracted from a student's progress.

By late Sunday afternoon, the database had generated more than 230,000 page views, an indication of the interest in the issue because Web traffic tends to be higher during the week...