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You're extending your experience to that of a public school teacher, and that's simply not a fair comparison. I'll try to touch all of the ways in which your situation is different and why this has a bearing on the subject at hand:

-You have fewer students. This is a _much_ bigger deal than you make it out to be, especially at higher grade levels. When you have to give feedback to close to 200 students (over 200 it not unheard of), you can't make it as meaningful as you'd like. There are things you can do with a couple dozen students that simply does not scale.

-You are dealing with an easier subset of children. If their parents want them to have extra lessons, and are both willing and able to pay for it (or even fill out scholarship forms), then you're not dealing with any of the difficult kids. Parents who don't care about school beget kids who don't care, and they are orders of magnitude more difficult to work with.

-Its clear that you are not aware of how much material these standardized tests expect you to cover in a course. I'm sure it varies by state, but this is from the perspective of VA testing, which is where I grew up and where I know many teachers. For just about any tested middle or high school class, they have the material mapped to within 3 or 4 days of the length of the school year. A couple of unexpected days off and they have to start cutting material that the test expects to be covered. There's absolutely no time to do the things you're talking about unless you want to blow off the tests - and then you're out of a job.

Standardized testing, _in its current form_, is an unmitigated disaster for students' educations. If you can say otherwise having actually faced the system you are so happy with (or even talked to a few who have), then we have a conversation.

The question is - would it be worse without testing or better? As the poster above notes from his own experience, some "math teachers", for example, do everything but actually teaching math. And from my own experience, being educated outside of the US, teachers vary dramatically in quality, with bad ones much more frequent than good ones and the majority being below average, and bad teacher usually means next to no education on the topic (I still have knowledge gaps in subjects where I had bad teachers, which I regret a lot but don't have enough time/mental agility to fill properly). The tests give you some kind of standardized quality, which is akin to McDonalds - nobody would call it a gourmet food. But the question would be - is the alternative a Michelin-starred restaurant or no food at all?

> The tests give you some kind of standardized quality

No, they don't. It remains nearly impossible to fire a teacher thanks to unions.

Note that I'm not arguing against standardized testing. But in its current form, it leads to kids being taught to memorize and how to take a multiple choice test (and nothing else, thanks to the breadth of the tests), rather than any useful skills. I do, in fact, believe that we'd be better off with no tests than with what we currently have.

Its also worth noting that the only way the tests are used in most states is to punish at a school level. Schools who underperform, inevitably those in poor neighborhoods, lose funding and are occasionally shut down. This actually makes the problem worse - it leads to fewer, less funded schools in exactly the areas that need them most.

Finally, the person who's experience you're drawing from was speaking about elementary schools. Please take my words only in reference to middle and high schools - I don't want to pretend to have knowledge about the situation in elementary schools.

The fact that it is impossible to fire bad teachers does not really prove tests do not produce some positive effects on these teachers, forcing them to at least teach something to the test, instead of teaching nothing at all. Again, you seem to be comparing "how teachers would teach if they had no tests and were excellent teachers" to "how teachers have to teach with tests". However, the sad reality is the excellent teachers are rare, and without tests nothing prevents a teacher from spending a year of math class discussing how they students feel when they look at numbers and why math is inherently sexist, while teaching no actual math at all.

It is long known that throwing money at a problem is not solving the problem of poor performance of schools. Poorly performing schools spend the same money per pupil as best private schools and still remain poorly performing. The solution, if it exists, appears to be more complex than pouring more money into it. Maybe solving the problem with the unions is a part of it.

>>>> I do, in fact, believe that we'd be better off with no tests than with what we currently have.

Could you explain why? I.e. if we now abolished all testing, how the situation would improve in average case?

> without tests nothing prevents a teacher from spending a year of math class discussing how they students feel when they look at numbers and why math is inherently sexist

Tests with no consequences don't prevent a teacher from doing so, either. My experience (and that of teachers I know) is that bad teachers don't particularly care how the tests turn out, since there aren't direct consequences, while good teachers do care and adjust accordingly. This comes about because bad teaching correlates (unsurprisingly) with not caring how the school as a whole looks compared to other schools.

> Could you explain why?

If we abolished tests, bad teachers would continue doing what they do now and what they did before testing, while good teachers would stop spending all their time teaching how to memorize facts and take multiple choice tests, and leave time for teaching how to think.

I would like to point out that 200 students per class in a public high school does not appear to be a worldwide phenomenon. High school classes in Europe appear to be much smaller.

Sorry to not be specific. This article is about the US, as is my comment.

I also was talking about 200 students per teacher, not per class, which comes about because middle and high school teachers generally teach 5-7 classes, of 20-35 (although sometime) students.

What is your classroom size?

What you can reasonably do with 20 you can't with a class of 160. When children learn to think, they are all going to think differently. That makes it hard to interact with them in a group setting and still encourage thought. Impossible? I won't say that. But I would call it well beyond my abilities in a classroom setting.

It takes him 13 hours to give each student's paper 5 minutes of attention. That is what is passing for "individual interaction". This may be very far from being the whole problem, but it definitely is a problem.

This is probably the greatest issue: teachers are expected to deal with their students in an individual, personalized basis... But they are constrained on all sides by the syllabus, the final exams and the sheer amount of paperwork.

Edit: also, the fact that the tests do not include relevant 'reasoning' questions makes them worthless.

You don't have 160 students at once. You have 30 students for an hour at a time, then 30 more, six times a day. (Or something similar.)

Yes, and that makes not that much of a difference because you find almost no time to properly grade their assignments.

I disagree. We teachers have plenty of time to properly assess student work. But we also have to give accurate, consistent and fair grades and usually written feedback as well, and that's what usually takes forever.

An hour a day with 30 kids is enough time to meaningfully interact with each student if you're not wasting the whole class period lecturing.

What do you mean by "meaningfully interact"?

Non-meaningful interaction might be saying hello, asking if the student is present, asking the student "Where is the homework assignment you were supposed to turn in?"

Meaningful interaction is checking in with the student regarding their understanding of the course material. Providing clarification if the kid is confused on some point. Allowing opportunities for the student to ask questions. That sort of thing.

The curricula were often quite lousy, and the tests rather poorly constructed. But neither so constrained teachers that we can conclude that they made things WORSE for teachers than before the Act and the associated tests.

I find this statement quite extraordinary. Moreover, despite the length of your post, I don't see where you reconcile the implication that there's nothing to worry about here. The various measures you're talking about might indeed ameliorate some problems. Most of these aren't available to individual teachers but to parents and administrators. Moreover, even these were available to individual teachers, even if the only thing stopping them was their venality (two statements I don't believe are true), even then, the teachers on average simply haven't done and the consequence is that a lot of classroom time has been devoted to mere test preparation. And so given that this program began a decade ago, there have been results.

Ill prepared college freshmen are a well known phenomenon in the United States.

Yes, you'd assume college teachers would consistently remark on this if the quality of graduating seniors were consistently declining. But you're this as if things couldn't get worse and I kind of think we should be worried about them getting worse.

Yes, the author here is blind to the fact that they are getting worse, and assuming its part of the normal trend.

Perhaps if the original article said that even the best students are now coming in with great test taking skills but little practical knowledge, then maybe it would be clearer.

Anyway, this is Hi from India, where we have been choking on the fruits of this system.

If you wanted to divorce understanding from proficiency, there is no better way than what you'll have implemented.

What's more terrifying is that this system mutates and evolves, and as older teachers drop out of the system you are left with a new crop who know of no other way to teach.

Finally you'll start getting guide books and coaching classes, massive money spinners,where students are trained on potential test questions relentlessly, so that they can get perfect scores.

A few years down the line some bright spark will argue that "we need to improve the system, our kids are getting through without knowing the rules of the grammar"

Cue fractional mark losses for bad grammar.

This kind of machinery is blind to its faults, and since it produces numbers and measurables, its hard to argue with.

But from experience with tests and human behavior, people always find the shortest path to getting stuff done. Be it video games, taxes or testing.

This is a sacrifice of your best for the mediocre.

Good point,

The mediocrity of a lot of third world education comes from an education system fixed on memorization - Richard Feynman had a comment about Brazilian education in one of this books (though things might have gotten better there for all I know). The thought that the US is creating a third world system out-of its previous first world education system is mind-boggling.

I've read that anecdote, and its exactly what's being done here.

It's the difference between literacy and education, and apparently literacy is now good enough.

I have to say that I think defining set curriculum and test goals for students DOES constrain good teachers. They are attempting to prepare their students to pass a test. So what do they do, they focus on that test and attempt to prepare them to pass with a certain disregard for what actually should be taught.

I think that this limits the scope and types of tests that teachers can give their students to really prepare them for these tests.

I think that we need to create a better metric for testing teachers and students, because our metrics are broken. I (as a student) see the education that is given post NCLB as detrimental to the future of our nation. It has taken a few steps back in the fact that we no longer allow extraordinary teachers to set the pace, but we allow the state to regulate what pace we need.

EDIT: It doesn't constrain teachers, but it does pressure teachers to teach to the test rather than teaching for college and education in general.

Thanks for sharing!

Do you find that the fact you are paid by parents for your work has any effect on the motivation or performance of your students? How about your own motivation or performance? What percentage of public school math teachers do you reckon would have the success that you have had if they tried to what you do?

I'm not tokenadult, but I can offer my two cents.

Assuming they're being paid "enough", paying teachers more does almost nothing to improve motivation or performance. There are quite a few studies about this, and my own experience bears that out.

Having students that are out of the normal context does make a difference, though. Especially given that there is high parental expectation for the student to make an effort. That's really a big deal, and parental support like that is very inconsistent in public schools.

Paying people that are currently teachers more does not improve their performance.

But, the pool of people willing to take up the profession of teaching increases if the pay is higher.

Where I taught, teachers with only a bachelors degree maxed out at $60,000 a year after 15 years of teaching (you could get that up to $80,000 if you got a doctorate). I was earning less than half of that. After teaching for a year, I quit to take an entry level programming job and was suddenly making more than I would have ever made as a teacher and my job was physically and emotionally much easier.

I probably wasn't going to be a great teacher. But how many great teachers exist but can't/won't take a job that pays so little?

Right now schools hire the best candidate willing to work for so little. I'd like to see them start filling up with the best candidates.

The fact that teachers aren't motivated more by greater rewards for excellence (money), but are strongly motivated by having a job with excellent security even for mediocre performers, should not be something that comforts us.

Or teachers are rewarded by educating students, and don't look at it from a totally mercenary perspective.

Which is generally what you want from teachers who ideally can be a students champion, guide, educator all at once, for a short span of time.

Once you tell someone their performance is only correlated with income, then they focus on those levers to manage it.

And once you have a sufficiently complex role, such an incentive structure ceases to be useful, and ends up killing creativity and open minded ness.

The answer about teacher motivation/performance is interesting, not least because it isn't answering the question that was asked. (Unless you do private work like tokenadult I suppose you don't have a basis from which to answer that question.) Do you find that public school teachers are paid enough? If they are paid enough in general, are there particular groups that aren't? Are there other particular groups that are paid significantly more than enough?

The answer concerning students makes perfect sense, and is what I would have expected. I want to blame the parents, but then I remember where they went to school.

I actually ignored your question because it seemed obvious (to me at least) that it would have virtually no effect. I cannot imagine a situation in which the motivation of the student would be in any way affected by the fact that the parent was paying the teacher. EXCEPT, as I mentioned, where that fact intersects with the parents having high expectations that the teaching is of value.

In my experience, public school teachers are paid "enough".

I worked out some numbers to that effect a few years ago [1]

However, that doesn't help bring qualified people into the discipline. I wrote about that, too. [2]

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979976 [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=114403

>>>> Do you find that the fact you are paid by parents for your work has any effect on... your own motivation or performance?

>>> ...paying teachers more does almost nothing to improve motivation or performance.

>> The answer about teacher motivation/performance is interesting, not least because it isn't answering the question that was asked.

> I actually ignored your question because it seemed obvious (to me at least) that it would have virtually no effect. I cannot imagine a situation in which the motivation of the student would be in any way affected by the fact that the parent was paying the teacher.

Do you teach reading comprehension? I would have hoped that it was clear: I was asking about the effect that being paid directly by the customer has on the performance and motivation of the teacher. Much like it affects the performance of waitresses, auto mechanics, architects, dentists, store clerks, pro athletes, and in fact most occupations in a market economy. If we're not providing a service that customers prefer to competing services, we're out of a job. tokenadult is a teacher who might have some experience of this phenomenon, so I asked him about it.

I really hope you're trolling me here, but I suspect instead a sort of epistemic blindness.

Not trolling. Also, I note that you cleverly elided over the question to which I was referring.

You (to tokenadult): "Do you find that the fact you are paid by parents for your work has any effect on the motivation or performance of your students?"

Me (to myself): Is this a real question? Under what circumstances could that possibly be true? I guess ONLY in the sense that parents who are paying someone have higher expectations for their students, and those higher expectations correlate with higher student achievement.

I have also been paid as a tutor, though I have considerably less experience as a paid tutor than tokenadult has. As far as I can tell, he does not have experience as a public school teacher in America, so I'm not sure I'm less qualified to answer the question than he is.

I am paid for my work, albeit at one level of indirection. But believe me, public school teachers constantly talk about parents "paying for their kids to go to school here" because they pay the state taxes that pay my salary. In fact, some parents intentionally move into a district with higher property taxes (like mine) so that their students can go to a better school.

So in my opinion, my being paid by parents isn't different from tokenadult's in any meaningful way, so I felt qualified to answer your questions with the data I am aware of.

Reading this again I can see that I was ambiguous. Instead of, "How about your own motivation or performance?" I should have written "How about on your own motivation or performance?" I refuse to repeat the entire "Do you find..." clause of the immediately preceding sentence, however.

If you feel that your position is in no way different from tokenadult's, how many students have left your class for another class or another school because parents felt your teaching was in some way inadequate?

I wouldn't say my position "is in no way different", though I can see how making my statement more dogmatic is convenient for you.

"How many students have left your class for another class or another school because parents felt your teaching was in some way inadequate?"

Almost none, but it's because I'm the "good" teacher. I do however have a couple of students per year that transfer from other high schools in my district to my school in order to have me as their computer science teacher instead of one of the other five CS teachers in our district.

I very occasionally lose a kid (one every few years) for my video game programming course because there's another CS teacher in my district that's clearly better at teaching that course than I am.

Were you not aware that students can sometimes transfer within high schools in a school district?

Edit: Oh! Also I teach computer science full time. The teachers at the other high schools have fewer students in their programs than I do (even though our schools have approximately the same number of students overall), so they have to pick up extra courses to fill out their schedules (like babysitting the in-school suspension kids) whereas I get to only teach CS.

I'm not very impressed either by the article's arguments. He seems to be promoting the idea that these tests cause teachers to teach more of what is tested. Things that aren't tested get taught less, and students need to know those things, too.

How is it that most K-12 industry spokespeople think this is a persuasive argument for eliminating testing? Why is it that only "outsiders" think this might be a better argument for expanding the testing? ("Outsiders" are what unionized or gov't organizations, which don't have a concept of customer, call customers.)

At our local (Silicon Valley) public elementary school, I got to see firsthand how the system worked with standardized testing. (I remember it prior to NCLB, because I come from a family of teachers.) Most elementary teachers are native English-speaking women who like kids, have better English skills than kids, mostly by virtue of several extra decades of daily use rather than formal study, did not like math very much when they were in school and had hoped to avoid "mathy" jobs, and for all these reasons plus decent money, security, and some prestige, had chosen elementary ed.

Most teachers at this level are very free regarding what and how they teach. Their are limits, of course, but the big one these days is the mandated standardized tests. How they tend to deal with this is fascinating and disturbing.

Most teachers (that I've seen in our school) teach very little math for most of the year. We had a wonderful exception last year, but some teachers will go days without teaching any math at all. They prefer reading stories, drawing pictures, talking about American Indians and Martin Luther King, drawing pictures, writing stories using "invented spelling" (you're literally not allowed to ask how to spell a word, because it's about creativity, not "correctness"), and illustrating stories with pictures.

Math homework might be to cut pictures out of magazines showing people using numbers. This is to "promote engagement" and "encourage critical thinking." In an era when everyone has a calculator in his pocket, math is about concepts, not correctness, we're told by people who never liked math and whose government-mandated teaching credential requires exactly zero classes on math concepts.

But then the standardized test day approaches and there is a period of two weeks or so when kids actually have to learn to get correct answers or the teacher's job may be in jeopardy. So, what do they do? Cut up even more magazines faster? Think even more critically?

No, they drop their progressive theory like yesterday's newspaper and revert to actual direct instruction. For nearly an hour a day (depending on age), they stop dividing into groups to "engage in mathematical discourse" and "discover" math for themselves and are taught how to solve math problems correctly---at least those math problems likely to show up on the test. Apparently, when their job depends on their students' ability to actually do math instead of discuss it, their whole approach to teaching changes.

But only until the test passes. Then, whew!, thank goodness that awful test is over and we can stop obsessing over measurable proficiency and get back to cutting pictures out of magazines, inventing spellings, drawing pictures, and talking about critical thinking.

The article's implication is that, if only we could stop objectively measuring student proficiency, teachers would increase student proficiency. That's not how it works in businesses that have to please customers or die. That's not what I see in school, comparing how and what they teach before, during, and after standardized test season.

So, what is his proof? That students today know less than they used to know? I say that's more likely due to being taught less than being evaluated more. But he says that they know less of what isn't tested, because the teachers have to work so hard to prepare students for the things that are tested. I say that if testing causes them to take proficiency in things that are tested that much more seriously, we should take advantage of it to evolve better tests covering even more things.

There's a common problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodharts_law) with proxy measurements, and issues with testing highlight this problem. However your description of what the math education looks like I think this is a lesser evil, at least until we find better measurable proxy for actual education that tests.