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North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#211

Post by brownbat »

I wish I understood the arguments against testing more clearly.

It seems as if the claim is that testing doesn't correlate with knowledge, since some kids "test well," or "test poorly," so it's a waste of time.

I've known lots of folks who claim to know a subject well, but test poorly in it. I've never been able to verify it though, because the followup discussions about the concepts involved left me... uncertain at best. I'm not sure undemonstrable knowledge is really any kind of knowledge at all.

But say we granted that an individual student's tests have a wide margin of error. Wouldn't the aggregate of tests for a given classroom or school still provide some information on whether or not a school was well or poorly run? (Assuming you use moving averages or something to soften noise.)

Do standardized tests really have no value, no redeeming benefits?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#212

Post by brownbat »

Bud wrote: post #69
justin_vanw wrote: post #25

It's fine to grumble about testing, but the debate is not about the tests. Teachers performance in the US has been terrible for many years. Partly this is because of bad management, partly because of low pay, and partly because of teacher unions preventing any action against the worst teachers and insistance on tenure tracks. The reason testing is good isn't because it is somehow super accurate. It is good because it…

So, if you aren't a fan of testing as a way to measure and improve teacher effectiveness, please find an alternative that works better. Just not having any metric at all is far worse than the imperfect tests we have. This is a gigantic assumption which you have tossed out there without any support whatsoever. You are basically making an assumption which encompasses the entire issue in question, and then just blithely…

Huh, I read it as "what is that way to measure school quality absent standardized tests?"

While I think you read it as "What's a better way to run schools?"

Your answer, roll back to before NCLB.

That could be true, but we still wouldn't have an answer to the other question. Absent standardized tests, how can we measure school quality? Hopefully something slightly more rigorous than testimonials from stakeholders... (ie, teachers claiming they like or dislike their school).

If there's a better way to get some standardized measure of student / teacher performance, I'm curious to hear it. I'm not pro-test, I just don't know the alternative metrics advocated by the anti-test community.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#213

Post by guelo »

tokenadult wrote: post #203
guelo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article wasn't about him getting fired in Oregon, it was a lengthy rant about him quitting in North Carolina. The reason you chose instead to focus your lengthy comment on that one throwaway line is because it reinforces your preexisting view that unions are the main problem with education, even though this article is mainly about some of the other problems.

this article is mainly about some of the other problems I just saw your reply. What would you suggest should be done about the problems you think are most prominently mentioned in the submitted letter?

I don't know the answers, but I tend to side with those that criticize the increased focus on tests. My experience as a programmer leads me to believe that the most effective work is done when you give passionate professionals the tools they need and then get out of the way.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#214

Post by saraid216 »

ntumlin wrote: post #210
saraid216 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> go to college, get a job, make money, spend money Can you tell me why these are good things to prepare people for?

College leads to job leads to money. Money is generally a pretty handy thing to have.

And some people disagree with the notion of money. Why is your value system better to indoctrinate the young with over theirs?

I don't disagree with you, mind. It's just that accusations of indoctrination are responded to in kind.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#215

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ntumlin wrote: post #195
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, when it's kids at stake, I get emotional, and the hellish system in place has to go.

"Forget your silly logic and think of the children !"

No, don't destroy a generation of children with bad science.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#216

Post by Tsagadai »

justin_vanw wrote: post #47
jbooth wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software developer performance in the US has been terrible for many years as well. Maybe we should institute some standardized tests? And if you're gonna complain about how measuring KLOC doesn't make any sense, well, it's not enough to just point out problems. You've gotta point out solutions. Be a team player.

You're right, it's exactly the same in every way. No strawman here!

It's not the same and that wasn't the poster's point and it isn't a strawman. Metrics are hard. Metrics for complex, creative endeavours are exceptionally hard. Both programmers and teachers are difficult to accurately evaluate and manage. Most developers I know object to arbitrary metrics for the same reasons as most teachers I know do, the metrics rarely measure actual performance and metrics are usually gamed.

Perhaps you would like to contribute something to the discussion instead of pointless sarcasm.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#217

Post by Tsagadai »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #170
saraid216 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could you be specific? In particular, how do I measure whether a citizen is prepared for a productive life or not? I like that you ignored the latter half. You don't measure the citizen. You measure the rate at which the country is liberalizing. That is, the rate at which its core philosophical attitude is becoming more individualist, egalitarian, meliorist, and universalist. The purpose of public education is to s…

So you are proposing that the purpose of education is indoctrination into value system X, and propose that a successful system will indoctrinate more people? Your goal is now vaguely stated. But how do I actually count the # of people concerned with individual rights/positive outlook/etc?

Yes, the purpose of all education is indoctrination to a set of ideas. Home schooling is also an exercise in indoctrination to a set of ideas. Critical thinking is an idea, egalitarianism is an idea, individuality is an idea, problem solving is an idea.

Education is a way of ensuring a more advanced and productive society through imparting certain knowledge and ideas to its children. The best metric for measuring the performance of an education system is rates of criminality. If a society has high crime rates then its education system is failing to produce productive members.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#218

Post by argv_empty »

natrius wrote: post #150
danielweber wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A private school education is not really expensive in most of the country. Think around $5000 a year. I know that's not pocket-change to many people, but you hardly need to be "upper middle class" to do it.

It'd be within the reach of more families if they could take the money that would be going towards their child in the assigned public schools with them to the school of their choice. I don't understand why that idea became a partisan one.

Most of the objections I heard were about putting that public money towards religious schooling (the interaction of government and religion being a fairly well-established as a partisan issue).

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#219

Post by wpietri »

Locke1689 wrote: post #156
wpietri wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems roughly equivalent to the argument that we should measure software developer quality by lines of code written per day. Sure, we know it's not a perfect measurement, but it's the easy one to check, and it keeps people from doing nothing. Of course, we software developers, understanding the complexity of our profession, know that would be idiocy. "But hey," says the MBA, "Some metric is better than no metric…

Then you create a new metric, you don't just throw your hands up and say, "well, I guess this stuff just can't be measured!"

Great! Then do it. Tell me the correct metric for measuring software developers. We'll use it to hire and fire them, to decide their pay, to compare divisions of a company, and so on.

Do that successfully, and I'll happily give you a good metric for teachers.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#220

Post by jpiasetz »

intended wrote: post #130
jeremymcanally wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not "anti-union," but frankly almost all of the issues he complains about are supposed to be things that the union helps with, especially professional development. It sounds like the whole system is falling over in that area, not just the district and not just the union.

Err, I read the article and I have no idea how you found this to be the most important part. I studied in India, and had a chance to study abroad as well. Currently, for reasons that escape me, you lot (Americans) seem to have decided to import those banes of thinking and real learning - standardized tests. Perhaps in order to have some sort of proxy or measurement for what is inherently a chaotic and un-measurable s…

Arguing against standardized testing is arguing against A/B testing.

If you can't measure it there is no way to tell whether it's getting better.

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