The New York Times loves to write articles about education which concern issues that any decent educator would know about and pretend that it is some kind of investigative reporting. Perhaps the public doesn't know these things, though, so I'll let NYT slide.
The latest article is on if we can really tell if a students in a school are learning by standardized tests. (No.) The compare annual state test scores to the recent NAEP scores and wonder why one test could show an increase in learning and the other would show a decrease in learning. (Uh ... because they are two different tests and the teachers obviously only taught to ONE of them.) Here are some great quotes from the article and my reader's response (a la Louise Rosenblatt):
Our leaders in Washington and the state capitals have not trusted teachers, principals and superintendents to grade and assess their own students rigorously.
The quote above boils down the problem to a T. With each of these tests, teachers are being told that they are stupid and unqualified to assess their students' abilities. Plain and simple.
Nationwide, millions of students may or may not be proficient, depending on which test you favor.
I've said it before and I'll say it again (and I'm not the only one saying it) ... tests only test how well a student takes tests. That's it. Nothing more.
"To us, more information is better," said Tom Luce, an assistant secretary in the federal Department of Education. "People say, 'Well, it's confusing.' But I think the American people can deal with two different pieces of information at once."
Really? According to the federal test results, they can barely deal with one. Typical Bush Administration spin.
Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the liberal group FairTest, says, "It shows these so-called objective measures are arbitrary, easily manipulated and profoundly political."
Yes. Assessment and evaluation will never, ever, ever, ever be completely objective. Even standardized tests are subjective in the fact that a human being (or an overpaid committee of human beings) made up the tests and decided what would be tested and how. If this is the case - that all assessment is subjective - why do we continue to trust suits in an office who develop tests over the child's teacher?
Can you really boil it down to a number?
No, you cannot. Learning is more complex that that. Public education is not a business. Learning is not profit and can't be communicated in numbers.
But, we don't trust teachers. My question is: if you can't trust your child's teacher, who are you going to trust about your child's education? Someone said to me this weekend that parents/voters/tax payers aren't wary about their child's teachers - they're worried about the unknown element - all those other teachers out there. This tells me that we just assume that a teacher is incompetent and ineffective unless we know otherwise.
Quite a shame.
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