I will talk today briefly about standardized tests. Currently, test scores are used to judge States, school districts and schools. Increasingly, there is pressure to use test scores to evaluate teachers.
The standardized testing movement is another facet of the market-driven education reforms that I discussed in a previous blog. Test scores are viewed as necessary because they “measure” what a student has learned in a school year. Again, to measure students from different States all of the students must be taught the same curriculum. Furthermore, under-girding the belief that standardized tests are good is a theory that schools are factories that produce test scores. Those test scores are produced by teachers teaching a certain curriculum. Notice that there is no mention of students. Although proponents of testing claim to have the best interest of the children at heart, the very fact of the matter is that test scores are their #1 priority not what the children learn (which are two separate issues) . The children are simply the container to produce the test results.
Standardized testing proponents also are encouraging the use of the scores to judge individual teachers. They believe that teachers can prove their “worth” by how students perform on standardized tests. Although this may sound intuitive on the face of it, research indicates that merit pay for teachers based on student test scores simply does not work. Market-driven education reformers also believe that test scores can be used to measure the “value” a teacher adds to the student each year. In other words, if a student “grows” and improves on their test scores then the teacher will be viewed as a success.
I believe that test scores can serve as a valuable piece of information when judging a teacher’s performance, but it cannot be the only measure. On a factory floor you may be able to measure a the performance of a widget maker by the amount of widget’s they produce. However, students are not widgets and we must use an approach to teacher evaluation that is more in-depth. To that point, Penn-Trafford has developed a teacher evaluation tool that is ver. y comprehensive and in-depth. A group of teachers and administrators developed the evaluation tool that will increase support for teachers while also increasing the focus to student learning and achievement
Dr. Butler, I think your characterization of U.S. education reformers as "market-driven" is spot on, and I applaud you for considering students as students instead of widgets. Please keep up your inspiring work. And know that you have plenty of supporters in the school district--even if they don't regularly post on your blog.
ReplyDeleteI am a huge opponent of standardized testing for our children, having been a "victim" of it myself and now seeing the negative affect it has on my own children. The incessant testing has got to stop - there is way too much memorization and so little actual learning going on now due to the pressure to cram everything into the minds of the students in order to perform well on standardized tests. And there is very little encouragement of creativity and creative thinking, skills that cannot be "tested".
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I think parents and students should have some sort of role in evaluating the teachers. Why doesn't anyone ever ask us for our feedback about the teachers? After all, our children are the "customers". Most places ask the customers to evaluate their experience!
I personally don't think it's wise to correlate education to any type of market mentality. While I understand the above poster's comment to mean that the students (and, sometimes, parents) may more often come into first-hand contact with teachers--as opposed to administrators--and may have personal likes or dislikes or insights related to particular teachers, I also understand Dr. Butler's comments (with which I wholeheartedly agree) to mean that considering educational settings as "marketplaces" is inherently antithetical to the entire purpose of education. That goes for teacher evaluations, too. Sure, a balance of subjective and objective evaluative procedures may be beneficial in terms of teacher evaluations, but the students and parents absolutely should not have final say--for the very reason that an "unpopular" teacher who is actually educating children--and doing a more than fine job of it--could be unfairly penalized because Johnny's mom or Susie's dad thinks her or his child should have gotten a higher grade or whatever. That's not education, either. Educational "customers" shouldn't get their way just because they complain a lot.
ReplyDeleteThe market place does not rely on the customers opinion alone but it is a tool, one of many tools, just as the parent and the student's opinion could be one tool the administration uses to evaluate the teacher. I was an educator for Penn State Cooperative Extenstion- we were evaluated by our audience they could rate us or answer open ended questions, we could also evaluate how well we taught our audience by pre and post testing the group. All then could be used by my superior to evaluate my performance.
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