My girlfriend (a teacher) gets stressed out every year around state testing time about whether her kids will perform well. I always half jokingly point out to her that her teaching, excellent though it may be, will have little if any impact because test scores correlate almost exactly to SES.
An interesting Malcom Gladwell article from a few years back addressing this issue: Most Likely To Succeed | The New Yorker
I refuse to believe that the average American parent is as involved and pushes as hard for achievement as the average Chinese parent. The schools are one variable. The students are a second. But there are a LOT more variables at play - and parents who aren’t involved, who don’t make kids do their homework, who are involved - but only to yell at the teacher when their kid gets a B - are probably the biggest confounding variable.
Also, most other countries"track" kids - not the U.S. where “no child is left behind” - we mainstream our kids as much as we can. My son’s fifth grade class doesn’t even have math and reading groups - all the kids - the gifted ones and the ones with special needs - learn at the same pace. Putting in three reading groups would make the kids in the lowest reading group “feel bad.” In China, a lot of kids just don’t take math and science - they won’t need it in their factory jobs. So you’ve already raised your mean test scores by shifting your entire bell curve.
I couldn’t agree more.
You must have missed post #12.
Taught high school and college here.
During High school teaching, I was first runner up for beginning teacher of the year for the state. I was also nominated every year by my district for teacher of the year (though an older geezer would get it).
Went to Grad school…came out and taught college level. I can humbly say I was pretty damn good. I still have my stack of letters I’ve received from parents and students, some coming many many years after the fact from both high school and college saying I was great.
I left teaching. Why?
2 reasons: Respect and Pay.
I’ve elaborated on these in gruesome detail here on the Dope in the past…but that is what drove me out of teaching.
I wanted to be PAID for what I did and I wanted to be RESPECTED for what I did. Since people (in general) refused to give me either when I was a teacher…fuck em. Let someone else teach.
I embraced a new philosophy…if it is worth doing, it is worth doing for money. If the money is not there…then obviously society doesn’t feel it is worth doing.
Then I’m sure you’d agree that the medical profession seems rife with marginally competent doctors, right? I mean, look how unhealthy their patients are, and how many patients die every year from medical mistakes and doctors not doing simple things like washing their hands to prevent infection.
I think you should read more about Michelle Rhee, and what she wanted to do, before you make a judgment.
You imply “teaching the test” is a bad thing, well riddle me this: Did you ever attend college? Your standard letter grade colleges all teach to a test, it is how they evaluate your grasp of a concept. Every final I’ve ever taken in college covered material that was taught in the class. In other words they were “teaching the test.” The great part was that the departments had certain expectations of what a student should know when they finished the class. That means as a college student at a college, I can enroll in any (let us pretend) sociology 101 class offered on campus and expect to learn the same basic concepts that the other sociology 101 classes are being taught. Teaching to the test isn’t it bad thing, it is standard procedure. So far it seems to have paid off, I haven’t had a bad professor yet. That is a far cry from my K-12 “education” where good teachers were rare as hen’s teeth.
Of course you have to have reasonable expectations in the test for it to be valid to grade teachers. You shouldn’t be testing 4th graders on algebra, but you should be testing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division because the average 4th grader should know how to do those things. You can even grade the teachers the same way the students are,
100-90% passing is an A, Time for a big fat bonus or pay raise cause you rock.
89-80% is a B, they would get a modest bonus or raise.
79-70% is a C, Remember a “C” is AVERAGE, not great, not bad, so you’d get your base pay.
69-60% that’s a D, Disciplinary warning, pay cut, two of those in, lets say 4 years, your ass is in the unemployment line.
Under 60% a big fat F, the school would immediately shit can your sorry ass for ruining our kids.
Teaching to the test is a great way to get some standards back into the public education system and provide the kids with skills that can help them do well in adulthood. Its also a great way to get rid of the “teachers” who get into the job strictly for the 3 month vacation.
In other words; Yes, teachers should be paid according to how their students test.
Who writes the tests you take in college? Is it the professor of the course, or is it some corporation hired by the university to test baseline knowledge instead of course-specific content?
You are comparing apples and oranges here. In college, the tests are designed to assess the student’s knowledge of what he learned in a specific course. The course is designed first, the the assessment is created, tailored to the course. With standardized testing, at least in the lower grades, the test assesses skills, and the teachers tailor their curricula around it. Some of the skills are things they should already be learning, and some of them are test-specific and have no broader application to learning or life. Hence, frustration with teaching to a test that is an end unto itself instead of the means to an end, like in college classes.
See the difference? At the college level, the testing serves the course; at the elementary and secondary level, the course serves the test.
It really depends on the test.
The effect of physicians on individual baseline health is a little exaggerated in both directions. I have noticed a willingness to criticize in ignorance various aspects of healthcare, followed by a trip to the doctor when the same individual becomes seriously ill.
Yes there incompetent physicians. I would like to see standards raised, but actually right now the pressure is to lower entry standards in favor of more diversity. There is something to be said for that as well.
I followed Michelle Rhee’s story with some interest.
- sigh *
Here we go again.
I’ve already posted this in two other threads (and quite possibly, I may be too lazy to search for them and link to them here), but my short answer is no.
I work for a company that contracts with the different states to develop, produce, administer, and score standardized assessments as required by NCLB.
The tests are designed to assess a given state’s standards, whatever those may be. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The tests assess student achievement of the skills spelled out in a given state’s standards.
So judging teacher performance based upon student performance on a test that is not designed to measure teacher performance is really, really using the wrong tool for the job. It’s a gross misuse of the student assessments. The scores, even when crunched through a bunch of psychometric voodoo, would still not tell the observer anything whatsoever about the teacher. It doesn’t even tell you anything about the student’s ability to succeed or the students’ intelligence levels.
To repeat: The standardized tests assess student achievement of skillsets that are spelled out in a given state’s standards.
If you want to base teacher pay on teacher performance, then I think the states need to develop teacher standards, much in the same way they developed benchmarks for students to master. Then you design a test that measures how well teachers achieved their skillsets, as defined by their standards, and then you are finally comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
But it’s very much like using a screwdriver to pound a nail. It might be effective, sort of, under certain circumstances, but in general: wrong tool for the job.
When I was in high school we had slow, average and fast classes. Who would teach the slow ones ,if they could never test as high as the other classes. Advanced placement separates the high testers from the low.
Can’t the same be said about teachers?
Then do you think it’s fair to say her reforms can be fairly presented in the way you presented them earlier?