Learning by Making Rockets & Robots

[wireties]

My wife is an executive in our local school system and I get these types of questions all the time. We (in this forum) are engineers or engineer-want-to-bes so I look at the education infrastructure as a system.

1 - Without negative (corrective) feedback the system is open loop and can run away. So I think testing of some kind is absolutely necessary, how else can we get feedback? And the larger the sample (the whole state of TX rather than one school or one school system) the better.

2 - There are awesome teachers out there who are hampered by "teaching to the test", no doubt. And I would say that the great majority of teachers mean well and work hard. But the reality is that there are (more than a few) poor, under-qualified and/or un-caring teachers as well. The great teachers are under-appreciated and the awful teachers are difficult to detect/remove.

3 - It is a dis-service to high school students to NOT test them and then subject them to the college entrance testing (AP, ACT, SAT etc). The reality is that students MUST compete within a standardized testing format at some point.

4 - AP teachers must "teach to the test" or what is the point?

5 - Being an awesome teacher is one thing, being aware of the content necessary to prepare a student for the next class (like PreCal before Cal) or a college entrance exam is quite another. It is too much to ask of an individual teacher. So I think teaching from common outlines to make sure common material is covered (but taught in a manner chosen by the teacher) is a good thing. BTW, this is what TX is trying to do this year - switch to EOY course-specific type exams and a common course outline.

6 - Newb teachers LOVE "teaching to the test" until they begin to develop unique methods and materials. Though they intend to become awesome teachers, it takes time. Thorough outlines and mentor teachers are a great help the first few years.

Well, that is my 2 cents.