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The union has filed suit to stop that from happening, and it's now up to a judge.

Educators, parents and teachers across the country are waiting to see whether the city will be allowed to release these reports. That's because school districts nationwide have begun grading teachers this way, but none of them have released them publically.

The secretary of education, Arne Duncan, says he supports the city's desire to give media organizations, including NY1, the information we asked for.

“I give New York credit for sharing this information with teachers so they can improve and get better,” said Duncan in a statement. “I also think that parents and community members have the right to know how their districts, schools, principals and teachers are doing. It’s up to local communities to set the context for these courageous conversations but silence is not an option.”

The grades are based on a complicated formula that considers how students do on standardized tests and tries to take into consideration other factors besides their teachers, factors like prior performance, race, poverty and disabilities. It's called a value-added formula, because it's supposed to calculate how much value each teacher adds to each student's education.

But most experts caution that it's still a very new, and imperfect, science.

“It's very important to understand that the technology of doing these value-added measures is very primitive at this point,” said Jeffrey Henig of Columbia University. “There's lots of inaccuracies. There's problems with in terms of what the tests in fact measure.”

The state's two highest education officials would not comment before the courts when asked whether they think the city should release each teacher's name and score. But the officials did confirm they support the idea of grading teachers this way.

“You would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to understand that we have pushed very hard for value-added,” said New York State Schools Chancellor Meryl Tisch. “We believe it is a central piece to improving teacher performance. We await the court's decision.”

“We believe in value-added data properly used. It needs to be accurate data. It needs to be part of an overall rigorous evaluation of teachers and principals that takes into account multiple indicators,” said David Steiner, the state commissioner of the education.

But the value added scores would be the only part of the teacher's evaluations released, not other factors like what their principals thought of their work. The court hearing is scheduled for November 24.