271–280 of 314 posts
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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!"
In science, no metric is better than a bad misleading metric, definitely.
I'm not sure what you're advocating, but it seems to be wish-based education.
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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.
The places I have worked have all emphasized goal-based metrics. The software developer lays out what they think their responsibilities should be and how they'll be measured on them. The manager then reviews the list with the developer and confirms the responsibilities and the measurements. The developer is then later graded upon his or her ability to meet the predetermined requirements.
I think the same thing could be used for teachers. Seems workable to me.
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How does being part of an elite come into play when it comes to parents wanting their children educated in the manner of their choosing?
Because that privilege costs a ton of money that only the upper middle class and the elite can comfortably afford? That said, i agree with imbracio: parents' primary responsibility is to ensure their kids get a good education, rather than worrying about fixing a system that is unfit able in its current state.
Having worked with numerous schools over the last decade I feel there are some serious problems that we as a society need to fix. I do feel that there are other options that are available to parents though.
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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.
Software developer performance in the US has been terrible for many years as well. The cost of software has been going up while the output has not been improving? Um, what? Maybe we should institute some standardized tests? Big companies already do this. They typically have very rigid processes for evaluating consultants/outsourcers and pretty much just follow the numbers. For higher end work it's trickier, but for s…
A) I see no evidence for either of these
B) If teachers are doing a worse job, shouldn't the new generation of developers be worse than their forebears?
C) We could argue both points all day. Both jobs are hard to measure. That's my point.
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All true, of course. But numerically accurate data on a proxy quantity that you don't care about are not necessarily inferior to numerically inaccurate data on the quantity you care about. Both pose challenges to interpretation. It's easy to be seduced by clear numbers and worry less about what the numbers mean. We can argue about which fields count as "science", but many fields try to learn from non-reproducible dat…
Standardized tests typically measure how good a student is at adding, subtracting, and reading a paragraph and using the information it contains. Why do you feel we don't care about that? What information should we care about?
In that sense, NCLB created a race to the bottom; schools that performed below-average got less funding, so if any schools successfully "taught to the test", they all had too or face budget cuts (that's my understanding, IANAT).
Is there evidence that these partial measures reveal and/or necessarily lead to a more general understanding?
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And he pays his taxes, outlined by said government. If there is a failure to deliver on the goods/services promised by the government, it's not his responsibility to make up for the shortfalls. It'd be nice if he did, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.
Government does not promise to magically take care of everything. And even if they did, the citizens run the government. Any shortfalls in government are ultimately the responsibility of the citizens.
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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.
I think living a good life and doing something that benefits other people (aka earning money) is a good idea. If somebody disagrees, he can of course take his kids and go live under the bridge and open his school there. Let's see where we'd have more applicants - in a school that teaches kids how to be successful or in a school under a bridge that teaches them money is nothing, you can subsist on garbage and live in…
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> Polling is another form of standardized testing (unless you propose asking different questions of each participant). No, it's not. Polling is an analysis of a large population through sampling. Standardized testing, in the context we're talking about, is an evaluation of performance based on the performance of a different group. > It seems you don't object to standardized testing at all, but merely to the goals of…
...evaluation of performance based on the performance of a different group. I'm confused - what group of people should we be measuring, if not the students exiting the education system? ...there were a number of interesting topics that we had no time to cover because it was more important to teach to the test. Again, I stand by my claim that your problem is not with standardized tests, but with the goals of the schoo…
You really only care about those standardized tests, don't you? Any other point of interest just sort of gets ignored.
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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…
Currently, for reasons that escape me, you lot (Americans) seem to have decided to import those banes of thinking and real learning - standardized tests. Standardized tests aren't the bane of thinking and learning. Drilling children over and over with questions identical to those on some test is the bane of thinking and learning. The United States has had standardized tests at least since I was a child (I took standa…
The problem that "teach to the test" introduces is that students focus on factoids and identifying the correct answer in multiple choice, but in the real world (or in college), I'm less likely to have to pick WW2 generals out of a lineup and more like to need to come up with a few paragraphs on what caused it or how it was won or something. Now AP tests do (at least partially) solve for this with their free response and short answer sections, but Standards of Learning (or other state tests) may not.
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Most of us have been to public schools. We have direct, first-hand observations about the quality of teachers. I had a few stars, most were just getting by, some actively sucked. From everything I've ever heard, most people had the same experience. It's not like we're talking about something none of us know anything about. We've been there, seen it.
We're also teaching kids about subjects they literally couldn't care less about. Every single class I took on World History, Arts, and English literature was very close to useless. I bet the artists and English lit lovers would say the same thing about Chemistry and Physics. We don't trust 16 year olds to make decisions on what they do and do not want to study, so we force them to study some things we know they won't…