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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
by 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 agoThat 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 agoSure; 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.