No, don't judge teachers using tests: Data is flawed and unreliable

When my daughter was 6, she announced, "I'm so lucky to have a smart daddy who's a teacher and can help me with my homework."

I hung a whiteboard in her room, which she began arranging after the fashion of her first-grade teacher. She made her friends sit in a semicircle while she explained whatever it was she had posted on her whiteboard. When they squirmed, she chided them.

Although I tried vainly to push books and music on her, she declared she wanted to become a math teacher. That threw me for a loop, but I was happy because teaching is the best job there is. When one of my beleaguered English-as-a-second-language students proudly says, "Mr. Goldstein, I never read a book in English before you forced me to do it," I feel like a million bucks.

But the state's new teacher evaluation system, which the Board of Regents has voted to adapt despite a likely legal challenge, has me worried for my daughter, as well as for every new teacher in New York. The new plan says that up to 40% of a teacher's rating will be determined by "value-added," or how much student scores go up in a teacher's class in comparison to previous years and, also, to similar classrooms.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/05/18/2011-05-18_no_dont_judge_teachers_using_tests_data_is_flawed_and_unreliable.html#ixzz1MlOc4Hkd

and some teachers will facilitate outright student cheating on the tests too (like giving the kids the answers).

People will do what they have to do to keep their jobs.

Madness abounds.

that brought them to this career choice, then student scores would go up, all with no teacher scoring based on students being limited to "learning" how to pass tests that bring in the revenue for the schools, the districts, the states.

Government making rules, holding purse strings, and so many lives in the balance.

fuckers :grr:

Teddy Kennedy recognized it. That is the whole reason we started doing all this testing, to force teachers to bring disadvantaged kids up to speed.

Do we imagine it was all great and then we started trying to fix things causing the system to go downhill?

Because the US does not believe in funding education. When I was a kid starting elementary school my parents were volunteering with the PTA to raise money for basic supplies for classrooms and books for the school library since the school board did not provide enough money. Parents raised the money for music lessons since there were no funds.

We'll fund prisons. We'll fund wars. But we will not put the same amount of money per capita into education.

This chart by Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.
 
That’s not only more than other countries spend but it is also more than better achieving countries spend – the United States spends a third more than Finland, a country that consistently ranks near the top in science, reading, and math testing.

http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd

Big, big difference. Per-pupil expenditure has less impact on targeted goals than being able to put students on track for either college or a trade. We should follow suit. The NCLB goal of having all U.S. schools have 100% passsing rate on standardized tests for all populations of students (including, insanely enough, special ed. students) by 2014 is a deeply flawed goal and is drving education into the ground. But that is the ultimate desired outcome.

Those who do not understand that the unspoken goal, the hidden agenda, is to decimate public schools via goals that cannot be reached need to understand this. There is a lot of money to be made in education, and the privateers have their knives and forks at the ready and have their legislatures bought and these legislatures are doing their bidding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/us/03prison.html

According to the figures I found, states spend on average $8700 per student per year and many spend much less - Florida is cutting the budget per student per year from $6700 to $6200. http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/24/us-usa-education-spending-idUSN2438214220070524 and http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/feb/17/michelle-rhee/michelle-rhee-tells-florida-legislators-spending-e/

The Politifact article on Michelle Rhee is interesting - not for the information on her but on the increased amounts spent on education and the testing. According to their information, the education system in this country has not really gotten that much worse. We just have not kept ahead of other countries.

Just think of what could be done if we spent $29,000 per student per year! And think of how many fewer people would be driven to crime if they could get good educations that would lead to good jobs!

Edited to add: I could not find the information I wanted to locate - how much of a percentage of money spent on schools these days is not spent teaching, but spent on the testing. Since most if not all of the NCLB tests are provided and scored by for profit companies, that is money taken directly out of the actual expenditures on teaching children. Testing is not education and that money should be budgeted separately and not considered part of our per student spending.

Things like this are why I left education. Without meaning to "toot my own horn", so to speak, I was/am a good teacher. However, I wouldn't play their game and sacrifice my students learning to a stupid multiple choice test. I'm still trying to figure out how you can distill the complexities of great literature into a simple bubble question.
To me, a good education is one where the student learns to think critically and logically about the world around them while applying prior knowledge to the current "problem". But that doesn't fit into a nice little easily quantifiable algorithm to determine if "real learning" is occurring.

We've turned it into a weapon. It was originally supposed to provide interesting data points for internal use, then people got wind of it and said they wanted the scores to be public. Then they wanted teacher evaluations tied to it. Then they wanted the right to take their kids out of schools that didn't get the scores they wanted. Because it was all about them, not what produces the best result, but what produces the best result for them and their personally.

Never was it intended that standardized tests would be used to grade teachers and schools, or to compare one school with another. Those who advocate using the tests like this have another agenda or have gone 'round the bend.