3 ms·

Using test scores in order to judge the quality of a teacher is like using brush strokes in order to measure the quality of a painter.

crusso 14y ago
So where part of the study showed that with randomized redistributions of students, certain teachers were able reproduce higher test scores -- your countering evidence shows otherwise. Great. Where's your evidence? My own evidence (experience going through school and generalization of how ability works in most professions) tells me that the good teachers in my life helped me to learn the information better and more deeply. My memories of those classrooms are of the subject matter and my desire to achieve in that teacher's environment. The crappy ones were noticeably so in that my memories of those classrooms was of misbehaving with my friends, having no desire to help the teacher teach me, and cramming to learn material for tests because I hadn't absorbed anything beforehand.
- sethammons 14y ago
  I just realized that I keep replying to you, crusso (lol). Cheers. I'm more interested in the demographics of the student population than the 'random distribution (1)' of students in that population to different teachers. What I mean by this is that I would expect 'good' teachers to be able to demonstrate their abilities with with relatively homogeneous groupings of students where those students are from relatively decent neighborhoods. If, however, this study included teachers in inner city schools with huge variance in the 'quality' of student that a teacher would receive at often vastly different levels of understanding in the teacher's discipline area, then I think the results would be interesting insofar as to allow others to dig into what makes these teachers effective. 1: If we are looking at a teacher who teaches a course with a pre-requisite, the grouping of students becomes more similar (ie, a trigonometry teacher is likely to have students both motivated to do well and to have passed the requisite lower level math classes, and their success is less surprising to me).
  - crusso 14y ago
    Cheers... I'm over-posting to this thread. I feel fairly passionately about education. It's one of those things that I feel is grossly unjust to kids of all socioeconomic and aptitude levels. We spend so much money on education but entrenched interests use their louder megaphones to hold kids hostage. A study comes out from the Gates Foundation that tries to tackle some of the education problems head on. It produces some statistically interesting results, but here on HN, I keep reading knee-jerk responses about "standardized testing" from people who apparently didn't even read the attached article. How are we going to solve these problems if no one even bothers to understand our options? Regarding your point - I agree. Any solution would need to account differences in what you referenced as a "variance in 'quality' of student".

crusso 14y ago

So where part of the study showed that with randomized redistributions of students, certain teachers were able reproduce higher test scores -- your countering evidence shows otherwise. Great. Where's your evidence? My own evidence (experience going through school and generalization of how ability works in most professions) tells me that the good teachers in my life helped me to learn the information better and more deeply. My memories of those classrooms are of the subject matter and my desire to achieve in that teacher's environment. The crappy ones were noticeably so in that my memories of those classrooms was of misbehaving with my friends, having no desire to help the teacher teach me, and cramming to learn material for tests because I hadn't absorbed anything beforehand.

sethammons 14y ago
I just realized that I keep replying to you, crusso (lol). Cheers. I'm more interested in the demographics of the student population than the 'random distribution (1)' of students in that population to different teachers. What I mean by this is that I would expect 'good' teachers to be able to demonstrate their abilities with with relatively homogeneous groupings of students where those students are from relatively decent neighborhoods. If, however, this study included teachers in inner city schools with huge variance in the 'quality' of student that a teacher would receive at often vastly different levels of understanding in the teacher's discipline area, then I think the results would be interesting insofar as to allow others to dig into what makes these teachers effective. 1: If we are looking at a teacher who teaches a course with a pre-requisite, the grouping of students becomes more similar (ie, a trigonometry teacher is likely to have students both motivated to do well and to have passed the requisite lower level math classes, and their success is less surprising to me).
- crusso 14y ago
  Cheers... I'm over-posting to this thread. I feel fairly passionately about education. It's one of those things that I feel is grossly unjust to kids of all socioeconomic and aptitude levels. We spend so much money on education but entrenched interests use their louder megaphones to hold kids hostage. A study comes out from the Gates Foundation that tries to tackle some of the education problems head on. It produces some statistically interesting results, but here on HN, I keep reading knee-jerk responses about "standardized testing" from people who apparently didn't even read the attached article. How are we going to solve these problems if no one even bothers to understand our options? Regarding your point - I agree. Any solution would need to account differences in what you referenced as a "variance in 'quality' of student".