Learning by Making Rockets & Robots

[Andrew Schreiber]

State mandated testing bothers me primarily because it is also used as a gauge for teacher quality. I will admit we need to ensure quality teachers and that the students are learning. The issue is that a student's score on a test is not indicative of the value added by their experience with that teacher.

Our educational system is set up in such a way that we expect everyone to learn content at the same rate. Addition: 2 weeks, Subtraction: 2 weeks, Multiplication: 1 week, Division: 3 weeks... People don't work that way and, as a result, we end up with students who aren't dumb but just learn a little slower than others being told they are bad at math (apply subject of choice here but I like math for my example). Now, we add in that maybe I'm 85% confident with Addition, 75% with Subtraction... what chance do I have of being good at Division and Multiplication? None. So I'm already behind. But I can probably pass the tests enough to get by. So I pass my tests one year, but remember, I'm still hazy on the core concepts. Now I'm going to build on those next year. It's a disaster. I fail the test. This failure looks bad on my teacher who is teaching me the new material which is not what I'm struggling with at all. How is it their fault that the teacher prior didn't adequately prepare me?

If that example was confusing, would you build a building on a foundation that was only 70% complete? What about a second floor on top of the first floor when the first floor is only 78% complete (on top of the foundation being only 70% complete)?

That's what our educational system does currently. I'm not smart enough to figure out the answer right now... but I can tell you that it's outright foolish to penalize schools or teachers for students not understanding the foundational concepts of the material being taught if that was someone else's responsibility. I will, however, suggest that we consider testing become differential, concepts test at the beginning of the year to determine where the teacher should focus their efforts and then students (and teachers) are evaluated based on the value added during that year. Yes, still an issue with teaching to the test but it rewards students and teachers who actually improve things rather than preserving the status quo.

Originally Posted by Astrokid248

While I agree that many parents are pushing their jobs onto teachers, at the same point, school is about taking an idiot kid and giving them the knowledge they need to be well-rounded adults. If that wasn't the case, I'd have skipped English and History entirely, because beyond making me well rounded, those classes are useless to me.

Presumably you are going into engineering... English is important, a good chunk of my job involves communicating with other people effectively. I won't mention why history is important because I am biased in that I really love history as a subject.