tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post3074302808381551270..comments2024-03-15T17:06:31.642-05:00Comments on The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian Perspective: The Shadow of Testing--or, How We're Poisoning Public EducationEric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-27925336067846445132013-04-24T14:43:21.884-05:002013-04-24T14:43:21.884-05:00Dianelos: The kind of testing you describe would c...Dianelos: The kind of testing you describe would clearly be far more effective in providing a useful qualitative assessment of how a school or teacher is doing (as opposed to providing artificial quantitative measures of something that can't be reduced to numbers in this way). But, as you note, it would be expensive--and for this reason if for no other it's unlikely to be implemented. <br /><br />And I'm not sure that some external agency coming in to assess outcomes (with money on the line) offers the best approach to protecting children from poor schools and teachers. I agree with Bernard that this is largely a matter of trust. My own instinct is that we're better served by focusing social attention on the production of dedicated and effective teachers, and on providing them with the resources for success--and then trusting them.<br /><br />In other words, make sure that teachers' education is of a high quality, that it prepares them well for educating our kids--and by all means test the newly minted teachers to ensure that they have the skills and training to be effective in the classroom. While that is no guarantee of having the occasional poor teacher slip in, a school is staffed by people who are in the education business because they care about teaching the next generation--and they have both the motivation and the means to pressure lazy teachers in their midst to shape up or ship out, to inspire one another to do better, to help each other become better, etc. <br /><br />There may be individual cases in which cronyism in a school keeps bad teachers employed--and external intervention may be called for in such isolated cases. But let's not let the whole system be built around the fear of such cases, with the effect of caring and creative learning communities being systematically diminished in the effort to identify and punish the occasional bad apple.<br /><br />We can design a system that is premised on trust--until evidence that the trust is unwarranted triggers an intervention; or we can design a system that is premised on mistrust, in which teachers must constantly prove themselves on pain of consequences (and so devote their careers to proving themselves to the powers-that-be rather than to educating our kids). I know which of these options I prefer.<br /><br />In short, let's treat teachers the way we do professionals in medicine and the law: Establish a rigorous process whereby teachers are trained and vetted--then trust them to do their jobs (and to be the first line of defense against those within their midst who don't).Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-11916194472530474782013-04-22T06:01:11.586-05:002013-04-22T06:01:11.586-05:00I think society must protect children from bad sch...I think society must protect children from bad schools or inept or just lazy educators, and I don’t know of any method for achieving that which does not entail some kind of evaluation of the child’s progress. <br /><br />On the other hand I fully agree that a superficial process of testing will do more damage than good. What I think is needed is a well designed, intrinsically flexible, and expensive testing process. And I strongly feel that it must include an hour of one-to-one oral testing in a relaxed and free-form environment administered by a specialist. Oral tests are far more powerful, allow the specialist to modulate her interaction depending on the child, and I believe allow for a fairly objective estimation of factors such as the child’s creativity, imagination, curiosity, critical thinking – factors which are very difficult to measure in written tests. <br /><br />Dianelos Georgoudishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09925591703967774000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-89297824266549503162013-04-21T02:42:04.297-05:002013-04-21T02:42:04.297-05:00Thanks for this Eric
I couldn't agree more. I...Thanks for this Eric<br /><br />I couldn't agree more. It will be cold comfort to know that this is an international problem. In New Zealand national testing has been introduced into the early years (1-8) for the first time, and teachers have been marching in the streets in protest. Yes, it's about mistrust, and in mistrust's shadow lurks fear. Fear not only that our teachers can not be trusted, but fear too that if our children can not be measured, and shown by these measurements to be superior to their peers, they will never secure a happy future. And yet none of the things that are most valuable are by their nature competitive. We learn better when those around us learn, we laugh harder when those around us laugh, we love better when those around us love. Life is not a competition.<br /><br />Bernard<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-32657150569764223432013-04-19T12:03:52.604-05:002013-04-19T12:03:52.604-05:00That's it exactly.That's it exactly.Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-13534611024992383212013-04-18T20:29:34.638-05:002013-04-18T20:29:34.638-05:00Good post Eric. High stakes testing has compromise...Good post Eric. High stakes testing has compromised what we value in education - relationships, caring, having fun together, character development, and lest we forget - learning. I have seen kids corrupted by this whole process and have come to hate learning. <br /><br />We have lost our ability to trust one another as a society. And now we are infecting our children with the same mistrust. It is sad. Cardinalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08752756974141094427noreply@blogger.com