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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 11t
by 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 agoWithout measurement, how can you know objectives were being met?
- saulrh 15y agoAgain, 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?
- yummyfajitas 15y agoAgain, more measurement is not better measurement. Again, how do you know objectives were being met? Please clearly state your evaluation procedure. ...complained bitterly about how hard it was to teach both the stuff that mattered and the stuff that was on the test. I've made similar complaints - Calc syllabi suck. Too many stupid algebra tricks, too little conceptual reasoning. This is a problem with the syllabus, not the test. All the test does is reveals when you stop doing your job and teach whatever you feel like, rather than what you are being paid to teach.
- aestetix 15y agoActually, I'd suggest the tests only reveal when the teacher stops teaching to the test. Also, it's really not fair to hold the teacher's job ransom and say that if they don't teach the way the test demands, they should lose their job. How about giving them the freedom to teach based on what they feel is good for their students?
- DanBC 15y ago> How about giving them the freedom to teach based on what they feel is good for their students? The controversy about teaching children to read using either 'whole words' or 'phonics' (and sub-forms of phonics) is a nice example of some teachers not working to an evidence base and causing harm to their students.
- saulrh 15y agoEven if they aren't teaching from an evidence base and from proper research, they're better at defining requirements than the legislators simply because they're the ones in the classroom and observing their students' progress. I assume you're a programmer, so I'll reframe the question: would you rather design your APIs yourself or have the CEO of your large corporation do it for you?
- DanBC 15y agoYou know that doctors say that this treatment works, because they see it works. And then someone does a double-blind controlled trial and it turns out that treatment is useless. (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa013259 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa013259)
- tokenadult 15y agoThere are ways to evaluate teachers other than running tests. Could you kindly provide some specific examples? It would be especially helpful for the discussion here if you could provide some citations to scholarly publications on other ways to evaluate teachers.