7 ms·

I teach 6-8th grade music at a local charter school, and while my performance isn't tested through standardized exams, I can attest to my colleagues' enormous f

I teach 6-8th grade music at a local charter school, and while my performance isn't tested through standardized exams, I can attest to my colleagues' enormous frustration with this very issue. For example: during our standardized testing this year, the school put in huge amounts of effort to align student incentives, most of which were silly and clearly ineffective. (My personal favorite? Disallowing students to bring their own books to read after they finished the test to "encourage" them to check their work instead of hurrying through so they could read the next chapter of The Hunger Games. Talk about easy ways to incite student frustration and contempt!) I can attest to students finishing a test in less than 10 minutes despite being given more than an hour, or refusing to do any of the test at all. I've heard horror stories of students using the multiple-choice answer documents to make pictures by filling in the bubbles, or simply choosing to color in bubbles so lightly that they can't possibly be read. I know of examples in prior years wherein students chose to write essays about how much they hate testing on the essay portion instead of addressing the infantile tripe they were assigned. Now, these are obviously exceptions to the rule (I'm a bit biased, but I think our students are almost uniformly excellent), but it is amazing how much damage one student can do by choosing not to care. (Or, in some cases, using their answers to vent their frustration). And why should they? As far as I know, rewarding students for higher performance is disallowed, leaving teachers with very few tools with which to convince students that these tests matter. Sure, you can go on and on about how their scores will be "important" in their future (which, to my knowledge, isn't always true), but that only goes so far. Sometime during the 2 weeks of intensive testing, the kids just don't care anymore. I'm all for assessing the performance of teachers, and I'm not sure how to fix the problem (or even if it can be fixed), but one thing seems clear to me: they're doing it wrong. [Updated to fix punctuation errors]

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- Drbble 14y ago
  Because these are statewide standardized tests that intend to treat everyone equally, not to help students learn.
- icarus_drowning 14y ago
  This is a good idea, but it can also lead to burnout. Our kids take a lot of assessments (too many, IMHO), and they start to get cynical really fast. Our school does a comprehensive assessment at the beginning and end of the year to track overall progress (in addition to smaller-scale techniques like the ones you mentioned), which would be fine except that there are so many government-mandated tests* that also have to be given that students start to burn out. Most professional educators have a pretty good grasp on the pedagogical practices that stress small, repetitive checks for understanding, which-- you're right-- works far better than massive, mind-numbing tests that demand significant student effort. *Of course, we get the results from these so late that it doesn't give us the ability to make on-the-fly judgements.
  - mjdwitt 14y ago
    > a lot of assessments (too many, IMHO) I definitely agree there. Just the other day, one of my mother's kindergarten students was drawing pictures of her and her teaching assistant and decided to caption the assistant's with "she helps us with our work" and my mother's with "she tests us."
  - jerf 14y ago
    "Of course, we get the results from these so late that it doesn't give us the ability to make on-the-fly judgements." And isn't that a bit bizarre? At least the multiple choice portion could be in your email in three days, if these were seriously intended to be used for any sort of guidance.
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  Testing throughout the year and measuring performance based on that seems like a bad idea to me. When I was in school the only important tests were at the end of the year (the tests everyone in the country would take at the same time: GCSE, AS Level, A2 Level etc.). Therefore I only worked hard for them and put little effort into other tests throughout the year as there were no long-term consequences for doing badly. So the only good way to judge a teacher based on performance would be to look at the final exam results and to ignore the results throughout the year.
- SomeCallMeTim 14y ago
  >I've heard of other schools also doing "real-time" scoring to grade teachers and catch kids falling behind early. Why would this be a good thing? Kids learn at different rates. I submit that the core of the problem in education is the expectation that kids should ever be forced to learn in lock-step. Kids are developmentally all over the map on a dozen axes. I've read many stories of "unschooled" kids not learning to read until they were 12 or older, and then learning to read past "grade level" in anywhere from hours to weeks. One kid who avoided ALL math until he was 15 managed to learn standard math through High School Geometry in less than six weeks of intensive study (with a tutor), once he was internally motivated to learn it. Given that he wasn't particularly gifted in math, think about how many hours of "instruction" in a subject he didn't like that he would have had to sit through "for his own good." And how bad he would have felt about himself if he were forced into "remedial" math classes. And the attitudes that would have formed about math. Similarly, kids who just didn't care enough to learn to read would have been thrown into remedial classes in first grade in some schools. In first grade! Kids that learn at their own pace (say, using Khan Academy or equivalent, or by actively unschooling them) actually learn the material better, and, more importantly, don't end up learning that "learning is boring." Which unfortunately is what almost all schools teach. The job of "Teacher" should morph into "Mentor," and all learning should be student-driven. I actually doubt Khan Academy is "good enough" to do what I'm suggesting here, but something in that vein should replace the current broken system. Learning shouldn't be adversarial; if it weren't, then rating teachers (i.e., mentors) would just involve asking the students whether they were helpful in their learning. And no, I'm not just spouting utopian ideals that don't work in real life; there are thousands of families using this teaching method to good effect, producing happy, intelligent, well-educated and well-adjusted young adults (I've met several now), as well as a category of school that uses a similar teaching/mentoring technique successfully. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school
  - noonespecial 14y ago
    “I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” Stanley Kubrick
gcp 14y ago
Sounds similar to the situation of a programmer with an app in the Android store. Your users will give 1 star reviews for minor problems or as feature request blackmail, without caring they're undermining your livelihood. The incentive for the person grading is just disconnected from the supposed meaning of the rating itself.
calibraxis 14y ago
Yeah, you're incentivized to punish your students for disobedience, and not respecting The Test. That's not a bug, but a feature. (At least from the perspective of those who formulate policy.) Would you want your employees to seriously disrespect tasks they morally disagree with, like sabotaging your advertising system because they think advertising is harmful to society, or changing your website to admit how you're raiding people's pensions? Telling off your big corporate/military customers? (If you did, you probably wouldn't last long in your position.) I don't know many bosses who want their subordinates to rush through their tasks, in order to read some book of personal interest, or to build a competing company with better service.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Let me re-phrase that: Would you want your employees to hack the current process, because they morally disagree or are bored, or simply curious. Maybe not. But someone will. Welcome to Schumpter's law.
- xtian 14y ago
  Perhaps the most important difference between employees and students is that employees get paid for their time.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    I think the analogy was being made between employees of your company, and the teachers at a school, not between employees and students.
  - hdctambien 14y ago
    The school system we have in place was designed to train students to be employees.
    - xtian 14y ago
      Absolutely, and I think that is its most serious flaw. Is that really the purpose of education?
lupatus 14y ago
Want an incentive to have students perform better? Schools need to implement a standard performance-based path for skipping grade levels so that students can get out sooner. I was reading Hawking, Nietzsche, and college-level humanities books in my free time in 8th grade because I was bored out of my gourd with my classes. In 12th grade, I was forced to take classes that taught, for example, how to balance your check book. I'm pretty sure that when he's older, I'm going to encourage my son to get a GED when he's 16 yo or so, just so that he doesn't have to put up with all of the bullcrap classes. And, I don't care about your socialization arguments. My son is 2 yo and already has great table manners, is polite, shares, and is quite empathetic. Most of the "normal" young people I meet these days behave either like wild Indians (feather not dot) or slovenly Barbarians.
- tgrass 14y ago
  Some schools allow students to graduate earlier. I got out of high school a semester early; my sister and mother both received their Bachelors at nineteen. While making no call on the politeness of the phrase, "feather not dot" is one of the best I've read in days.
  - ndespres 14y ago
    > While making no call on the politeness of the phrase, "feather not dot" is one of the best I've read in days. Really? It was an inappropriate remark, I was surprised to read it and even more surprised to see it lauded by someone else.
    - lupatus 14y ago
      Seriously? The first time I encountered the phrase was at a picnic while talking with an Eskimo tribal administrator and a physics professor from Khalilabad. For the life of me, I can't remember which one used it first. I was under the impression that it was an acceptable short-hand for distinguishing which culture/ethnicity is being referenced when either is equally likely. Do the PC-police now disagree?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Drbble 14y ago
Because these are statewide standardized tests that intend to treat everyone equally, not to help students learn.
icarus_drowning 14y ago
This is a good idea, but it can also lead to burnout. Our kids take a lot of assessments (too many, IMHO), and they start to get cynical really fast. Our school does a comprehensive assessment at the beginning and end of the year to track overall progress (in addition to smaller-scale techniques like the ones you mentioned), which would be fine except that there are so many government-mandated tests* that also have to be given that students start to burn out. Most professional educators have a pretty good grasp on the pedagogical practices that stress small, repetitive checks for understanding, which-- you're right-- works far better than massive, mind-numbing tests that demand significant student effort. *Of course, we get the results from these so late that it doesn't give us the ability to make on-the-fly judgements.
- mjdwitt 14y ago
  > a lot of assessments (too many, IMHO) I definitely agree there. Just the other day, one of my mother's kindergarten students was drawing pictures of her and her teaching assistant and decided to caption the assistant's with "she helps us with our work" and my mother's with "she tests us."
- jerf 14y ago
  "Of course, we get the results from these so late that it doesn't give us the ability to make on-the-fly judgements." And isn't that a bit bizarre? At least the multiple choice portion could be in your email in three days, if these were seriously intended to be used for any sort of guidance.
k-mcgrady 14y ago
Testing throughout the year and measuring performance based on that seems like a bad idea to me. When I was in school the only important tests were at the end of the year (the tests everyone in the country would take at the same time: GCSE, AS Level, A2 Level etc.). Therefore I only worked hard for them and put little effort into other tests throughout the year as there were no long-term consequences for doing badly. So the only good way to judge a teacher based on performance would be to look at the final exam results and to ignore the results throughout the year.
SomeCallMeTim 14y ago
>I've heard of other schools also doing "real-time" scoring to grade teachers and catch kids falling behind early. Why would this be a good thing? Kids learn at different rates. I submit that the core of the problem in education is the expectation that kids should ever be forced to learn in lock-step. Kids are developmentally all over the map on a dozen axes. I've read many stories of "unschooled" kids not learning to read until they were 12 or older, and then learning to read past "grade level" in anywhere from hours to weeks. One kid who avoided ALL math until he was 15 managed to learn standard math through High School Geometry in less than six weeks of intensive study (with a tutor), once he was internally motivated to learn it. Given that he wasn't particularly gifted in math, think about how many hours of "instruction" in a subject he didn't like that he would have had to sit through "for his own good." And how bad he would have felt about himself if he were forced into "remedial" math classes. And the attitudes that would have formed about math. Similarly, kids who just didn't care enough to learn to read would have been thrown into remedial classes in first grade in some schools. In first grade! Kids that learn at their own pace (say, using Khan Academy or equivalent, or by actively unschooling them) actually learn the material better, and, more importantly, don't end up learning that "learning is boring." Which unfortunately is what almost all schools teach. The job of "Teacher" should morph into "Mentor," and all learning should be student-driven. I actually doubt Khan Academy is "good enough" to do what I'm suggesting here, but something in that vein should replace the current broken system. Learning shouldn't be adversarial; if it weren't, then rating teachers (i.e., mentors) would just involve asking the students whether they were helpful in their learning. And no, I'm not just spouting utopian ideals that don't work in real life; there are thousands of families using this teaching method to good effect, producing happy, intelligent, well-educated and well-adjusted young adults (I've met several now), as well as a category of school that uses a similar teaching/mentoring technique successfully. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school
- noonespecial 14y ago
  “I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” Stanley Kubrick

gcp 14y ago

Sounds similar to the situation of a programmer with an app in the Android store. Your users will give 1 star reviews for minor problems or as feature request blackmail, without caring they're undermining your livelihood. The incentive for the person grading is just disconnected from the supposed meaning of the rating itself.

calibraxis 14y ago

Yeah, you're incentivized to punish your students for disobedience, and not respecting The Test. That's not a bug, but a feature. (At least from the perspective of those who formulate policy.) Would you want your employees to seriously disrespect tasks they morally disagree with, like sabotaging your advertising system because they think advertising is harmful to society, or changing your website to admit how you're raiding people's pensions? Telling off your big corporate/military customers? (If you did, you probably wouldn't last long in your position.) I don't know many bosses who want their subordinates to rush through their tasks, in order to read some book of personal interest, or to build a competing company with better service.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Let me re-phrase that: Would you want your employees to hack the current process, because they morally disagree or are bored, or simply curious. Maybe not. But someone will. Welcome to Schumpter's law.
xtian 14y ago
Perhaps the most important difference between employees and students is that employees get paid for their time.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  I think the analogy was being made between employees of your company, and the teachers at a school, not between employees and students.
- hdctambien 14y ago
  The school system we have in place was designed to train students to be employees.
  - xtian 14y ago
    Absolutely, and I think that is its most serious flaw. Is that really the purpose of education?

lupatus 14y ago

Want an incentive to have students perform better? Schools need to implement a standard performance-based path for skipping grade levels so that students can get out sooner. I was reading Hawking, Nietzsche, and college-level humanities books in my free time in 8th grade because I was bored out of my gourd with my classes. In 12th grade, I was forced to take classes that taught, for example, how to balance your check book. I'm pretty sure that when he's older, I'm going to encourage my son to get a GED when he's 16 yo or so, just so that he doesn't have to put up with all of the bullcrap classes. And, I don't care about your socialization arguments. My son is 2 yo and already has great table manners, is polite, shares, and is quite empathetic. Most of the "normal" young people I meet these days behave either like wild Indians (feather not dot) or slovenly Barbarians.

tgrass 14y ago
Some schools allow students to graduate earlier. I got out of high school a semester early; my sister and mother both received their Bachelors at nineteen. While making no call on the politeness of the phrase, "feather not dot" is one of the best I've read in days.
- ndespres 14y ago
  > While making no call on the politeness of the phrase, "feather not dot" is one of the best I've read in days. Really? It was an inappropriate remark, I was surprised to read it and even more surprised to see it lauded by someone else.
  - lupatus 14y ago
    Seriously? The first time I encountered the phrase was at a picnic while talking with an Eskimo tribal administrator and a physics professor from Khalilabad. For the life of me, I can't remember which one used it first. I was under the impression that it was an acceptable short-hand for distinguishing which culture/ethnicity is being referenced when either is equally likely. Do the PC-police now disagree?