I have been reading for the past year about how education reform will remove the tenure system from public school districts and have evaluations in place to evaluate a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. Race to the Top, No CHild Left Behind, Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C., the US rank in world education all weigh heavily on educators across the US. "Test scores, That's how we will evaluate teachers effectiveness".
So, are teachers truly effective if 100% of their students can pass average or above average on a standardized test?
Example- in a small rural district in Southwestern Missouri, a 3rd grade classroom was recognized for having one of the highest Math scores on a state test compared to other districts of same or even bigger size. The teacher was recognized by the governor, the school awarded a plaque, and written up in the newspaper This school had a relatively high percentage of free/reduced lunch, rural children who were bused from 1 hour away on county roads, and had transient and migrant families (farm work). Wow- what a great teacher!!! She is effective!!! However, that class studied Math skills 90% of the school day for the year. Little time was give to reading, social studies or science. Drills were practiced, worksheets written over and over, and released test items were studied. Practice tests were given over and over, tutoring was encouraged. Now, is this true effectiveness? I don't think so.... I think it is a travesty of the education system to honor this kind of teaching. Did the kids really LEARN or did they memorize? And since other skills were not taught, obviously that's not effective teaching ( but wait- the kids passed the test!- NOT) BESIDES the test, was there purpose or application? And I think it gives the wrong idea to parents....My kid got 95% on the TEST what do you mean he is failing the next grade?
my own children feverishly study their spelling words each Wednesday and Thursday nights for the test on Friday. They are so happy when they come with a good grade on the report card. The teachers are "effective", my children passed the test. But frankly, my children neither can use the words when writing or speaking or know how to spell them the next week. This makes me mad!!! This is CRAP!!! I don't care if all computers have spell checks and grammar corrections to fix it for them- this is a basic skill my kids should know. The grade DOES not reflect the ability!!!! I want my children to be made to apply these skills.
Effectiveness is a Fallacy.
Elizabeth, kudos for sharing that. You illustrate how skewed results can be. Nothing can be taken seriously when presented in such isolation. It's got to actually be learned: internalized not memorized and generalized for future use to be effective in any sense.
ReplyDeleteYou mean education is not data regurgitation at the end of each week, only to have the data replaced by the next week's data set? I think a few of these "decision makers" could be helped if they'd spend a few days reading Zander and get past finger-point and start taking a look at the whole equation and not just what is politically expedient.
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