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Ensuring that scores are reported correctly won't even start to fix our educational system. We don't need to cut down on cheating; rather, we need to realize th

• ilaksh 15y ago
  I agree about more data is not better data. I get the impression that its not just that they are doing standardized tests. I mean I remember doing quite a few California tests when I was growing up (I was born in 1977 so this was before No Child Left Behind). But from what I hear, they have gone completely overboard with the standardized tests so that it takes up all of the time. I don't see anything wrong with having a few simple standard tests to cover some important things. I think it is actually important to have some kind of holistic measurement and analysis and guidelines. But clearly there are too many tests, too comprehensive, and the attempt to mandate actions based on the tests is repressive and even destructive rather than helpful.
• mackyinc 15y ago
  I agree to you, just let the teachers do their job.
• einhverfr 15y ago
  I think, as you seem to point out, the real problem is trying to reduce teachers to factory work, where these tests are sort of quality assurance after the fact. It's important to get back to the idea of hand crafted education, rather than trying to mass produce it, and work on hiring good teachers, and turning them loose.
  • deleted 15y ago
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• tomjen3 15y ago
  How do we know the were doing a good job before? Heck most of the teachers i had in school were okay, but there were a significant minority who could have been replaced with a doorknob and improved how much we learned.
  • saulrh 15y ago
    I've had bad teachers before, and I've had good teachers before. What I've observed is that the tests tend to prevent the good teachers from being good without really detecting the bad teachers. A few of the best teachers I ever had were forced to waste a month ticking boxes on the "get ready for the test" list, a month that they could have spent teaching things that were actually useful. Meanwhile, the bad teachers went on doing exactly the same thing they were doing before, because even a doorknob could have checked off "students must have studied the following important people from the civil rights movement".
    • tomjen3 15y ago
      That indicates to me that we need better tests, not to give up on tests. Would a reasonable test be "is this child learning at a faster rate than we can otherwise expect it to statistically"?
      • saulrh 15y ago
        Sure; that's exactly what I advocated in a comment on the last thread. Basically, we need to stop ranking students against a fixed list of objectives and go back to ranking them against each other. Give students space to expand rather than chaining them to the common-denominator child in rural Alabama.
• viraptor 15y ago
  This reminds me of the standard problem off measuring programmers'' productivity. If some high level manager gets to do what they think would work, you end up with something like counting lines, or bug fixes per day without any regard for the bug size. You'll get measured that way against the other teams/members. Isn't that pretty close to what you're describing? Maybe it's a similar issue? Maybe people are just fooling themselves that you can reduce this problem to any meaningful single dimension?
• yummyfajitas 15y ago
  ...teachers know a lot more about teaching than we do, that the teachers were doing a hell of a lot better before we started measuring them... How do you know this? Even in principle, how could you know this? To me, it sounds like "I was such a good government contractor before they started auditing me and making sure I actually delivered what was promised."
  • saulrh 15y ago
    There are ways to evaluate teachers other than running tests. In particular, I was in about ninth grade when NCLB hit, and its effects started rolling in in 11th grade. I was sufficiently aware of the situation to observe. It was a lot more like "The government contractors building my bridge were meeting all their deadlines until their managers started demanding documentation in triplicate for every nail they hammered in."
    • yummyfajitas 15y ago
      Without measurement, how can you know objectives were being met?
      • saulrh 15y ago
        Again, more measurement is not better measurement. I spent fifty hours a week in a classroom for nearly twelve years. Quite a bit of that was watching my fellow classmates struggle to understand things that I'd learned from the textbook at the beginning of the year. You get pretty good at it. Also, around 10th grade, every single teacher in the entire school rewrote their syllabus. From there on, the ones with appropriate degrees in math and science - you know, the ones that actually knew what they were doing - complained bitterly about how hard it was to teach both the stuff that mattered and the stuff that was on the test.
        • DanBC 15y ago
          > I spent fifty hours a week in a classroom for nearly twelve years. Where?
• DanBC 15y ago
  > that teachers know a lot more about teaching than we do Teachers think they know what's right, but without good quality research (large samples and preferably some blinding) they cannot know what methods are more effective.