Have we not learned by now that people can be trained to score well on tests without really understanding the material they are being tested on?
The problem here is that there is no randomized sampling in these tests. Everyone is tested, and so teachers know in advance that their students will be tested and they know what those tests will cover and even how the problems will be stated. Teaching "to the test" is a practically guaranteed outcome when you start telling teachers that their salaries or careers will be linked to student performance on tests.
There is also the matter of failing to recognize that a student with expertise in math has a great advantage on tests in physics, chemistry, and to some extent even literacy tests. One cannot simply blame a science teacher whose students are doing poorly if the students' poor performance is the result of incompetent math education. If students are illiterate, they will probably do poorly on all standardized tests because they will be unable to read the instructions.
We had a measure of how kids were doing: The report card.
To me, that's what this gentleman is asking for. A return to previous teaching standards, not teaching to some standard written & defined at a government level by people who don't teach.
I just listened to this episode the other night and the themes presented parallel this discussion nicely. The narrative presented suggests that one of the best things Washington Irving did was to have carefully constructed report cards that measured what specifically was being taught to students. The other thing was removing poorly devised standards.
That being said, at the end of the episode, one of the teachers interviewed, when asked about whether the temporary success of Washington Irving was due to some hard to measure effect of having good teachers at the right place at the right time had this to say:
> It can't just be magic. It can't just be fluky things landing people in the right places, and the chemistry being right. It just can't be that. What's the hope for the rest of the schools? What's the hope for Irving in the future? What's the hope for any school, anywhere?
The apparent tension between a need for measurement by standards and a need for teachers' autonomy was palpable and heartbreaking. It is well worth a listen.
As for a solution, I can't help but wonder why there is such a focus on making and enforcing standards at higher levels of administration. I imagine it gives a feeling of productivity and control. I wonder if it would be more useful if those bodies focused on studying and informing. Of course studies are harder without standards but it might be worth expending the effort, since it would give a more natural view of what is effective in promoting learning.
[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/275/t...
Report cards are as deeply flawed as standardized tests. If I were to tell you that I received a D in middle school algebra and an F in English, would you assume that I found algebra challenging and that I had literacy problems when I was 12? If so, you would be utterly wrong: I was beginning to understand limits and integration was I was in 7th grade, and I was reading at a "post-high-school level" according to my school.
The reason my grades were not even remotely related to my aptitude was simple: grades are not meant to reflect aptitude. Aptitude gets you a D- if you do not turn in your homework, even if you did not bother with homework because you were busy learning more advanced material. I am neither the first nor the last person to have been given grades that did not reflect my understanding or talents in any subject.
Report cards try to give a one-dimensional view of a student's academic performance, and in doing so they favor a particular kind of student. Obedient students who do exactly as they are told and nothing more, who only learn what their teachers expect them to learn, receive the best grades. Second best are those who try really hard to be compliant but who lack the talent or understanding needed to answer every question to their teachers' satisfaction. Last place is reserved for students who either do not care about being educated or those who care but fail to properly follow instructions or fit into the neat view of people that American teachers have.
Our education system is meant to train people to follow directions to the letter, and the switch from report cards to standardized tests has not changed that.
I always completed my homework, and then went on to learning the more advanced things. It was so simple for me that in the majority of cases, completing it took me very little effort or time.
However, I'm sure most of my teachers would laugh if they heard me called obedient. I'm sure they'd have loved to have flunked me if I'd ever given them the smallest opportunity to do so.
It's quite easy to learn what you like, and have the best grades as well. The really annoying thing is running out of homework to do and then getting busted for reading a book quietly instead. (1000 page asimov novel being somewhat more obvious to spot than a page of algebra homework)
(That, and having a 105% in a class and still not being allowed to go back to sleep in your seat at 8AM. Zzzz.)
Your comment starts with the assumption that having grades that are based on whether or not homework is turned in is how things should be. My point was that teachers should not be giving bad grades to students who did not do their homework, they should be giving bad grades to students who do not demonstrate an understanding of the subject.
Grades are assigned in three ways
1) Relative to the skill your teacher believes you have
2) Relative to the rest of the class
3) Absolutely based on what the teacher individually believes constitutes mastery of the material.
The report card is almost meaningless.
65% exam scores / written essays
25% homework
10% classwork
So while the report card is meaningless, it is meaningless for a different reason than you suggest. It is meaningless because it has nothing to do with aptitude or education and everything to do with obedience.
Even if they're good judges of quality, it's still a matter of how they determine your grade. Is it good quality relative to what they think your skills are? Is it good quality relative to the rest of the class? Is it good quality relative to what they believe constitutes mastery of the subject? And some teachers curve and some don't.
And I haven't said whether I think teachers should be required to meet standards. I don't even know if it's possible to create good standards.
Typically when educators critique "testing" the critique is in two parts:
1. Why is there so much emphasis on raw factual knowledge - which is easily tested - and so little emphasis on analysis and critical thinking (points mentioned in the article).
2. The amount of testing and test preparation conducted in schools has now reached a point where it is materially effecting the amount of actual teaching that is being done.
If a school or district fails a national level test it typically kicks off a spiral of district level tests, practice tests and separate test preparation which ends up putting the kids further behind.
It takes literally 30 seconds of looking at a piece of student writing, for example, to have a pretty accurate assessment of their writing ability.
The problem is that we assume we need to test students, and not teachers.
If teaching is the problem, why are we testing students?
We don't blame bad code on the users, do we?
The second problem with your statement, is the unanswered question of who is doing the testing, and who is fiddling with the knobs. Not an easy question, but one that can't be ignored.
>If teaching is the problem, why are we testing students?
And, err, how do you propose to test teachers?
This isn't 'automated' accountability. But it is a real answer, not the short-cut that many people are looking for with standardized testing.
Also, what makes you think school administrators have some answers that teachers don't when it comes to how to do the job, or have any idea, really, how to fairly and correctly evaluate teacher performance. Similarly, why do the same people who routinely call for teachers to be fired for poor performing classrooms never seem to want to hold administrators and school boards to account for their poor performance? Why do state and local governments who cut education funding year after year get a pass?
I think it's a comforting world view to think that if we could just bust the teacher's unions and start firing people, we'd get real results. But it ignores the fact that the system is broken in may more ways—and in many worse ways—than just the teachers.
Are you saying that a teacher's supervisor (the principle) shouldn't be in charge of evaluating their performance?
Are you assuming that I think administrators and school boards shouldn't be held accountable as well?
Are you assuming that I'm saying firing people will fix the system?
If we can't overcome a problem as simple as firing bad teachers, how can we address so many of the other issues that face the school system? Does the fact that other problems exist mean we should ignore this problem?
Of course a teacher's supervisor should be in charge of evaluating them. But they must be competent to do so and they should do so through evaluation of individual lesson plans and classroom observation, not the performance of the teacher's students on a standardized test. That's not a straw man by the way, there are a lot of people in this debate who think that's an acceptable metric for making decisions on compensation and hiring and firing [1]. Whether you are one of them, I have no idea. But the argument you make above is one I have encountered many times, and typically its adherents are quite myopic about the culpability of everyone else in the system.
Of course there should be a way to evaluate teachers and hold them accountable. And there should be a way fire them if it's called for. But it has to be equitable. And it shouldn't hold teachers hostage to factors they don't control. But even granting you that, I haven't seen any evidence that this is going to lead to much an improvement in the educational system. There are much bigger problems here than "bad teachers".
Of course there are other problems to be solved. But the fact that there are no effective controls whatsoever on teacher performance, and that teaching is not a highly selective profession, is still a problem.
[1] See: http://www.epi.org/publication/bp278/ and http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/meet-a...
There are many ways to measure though and tests are just one of them. They also happen to be the easiest and most understood, which is why they get used in schools and by use officials to track and rate how well a school is doing.
With many of these tests, especially good schools are hitting the ceiling of how well it's possible to do. If you're scoring a 99% every year, how do you improve?