Teachers, assessment and FRC

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by KHall

'until you can measure meaningful progress, you're just a bunch of people who play with robots'.

It is generally true that if you cannot measure what you are doing, you cannot manage what you are doing.

The purpose, mission, and vision of FIRST isn't to teach or improve scientific literacy, but to inspire. And as any teacher will tell you, an inspired student is more desirable than an resistant student. There are a million stories about how a student growing up was inhibited from STEM activities because the teachers, the community, and their peers viewed it as a negative activity. FIRST seeks to correct that. And yes, some of my strongest NEGATIVE memories as a child regarding STEM came from the teachers.

I am suggesting that your professor is measuring the INCORRECT thing !!!!

For whatever reason, I would suggest that your professor fails to recognize the linkage between an positive viewpoint toward STEM versus a negative viewpoint. It is that simple.

Just an hour ago I received an email from "Education Week" with this quote in an article: "The problem, then and now, is that the architects of futurist school reform are too invested in the status quo to tolerate, let alone foster, much subversion, criticism, or free thinking." Education Week

All too often the most resistance to change are those inside the school system.

Hundreds of thousands of students, 85,000+ volunteers and mentors, over 3,500 institutions and corporations outside the ivory tower that contribute $ 35M+ in direct costs and probably 3 times that in other costs, $ 14M in scholarships disagree with your professors assertion. This money is freely given and NOT taxes.

There are other perspectives and opinions about the value of FIRST and you don't need to have a graduate degree in education to recognize this, with all due respect.