This blog features observations from Randy Turner, a former teacher, newspaper reporter and editor. Send news items or comments to rturner229@hotmail.com
Thursday, August 28, 2014
John Jungmann: Amendment 3 is frightening
A report from KOLR News
1 comment:
Anonymous
said...
I wish that everyone would understand what it means for teachers to be judged on student test scores. The teacher has no control over which students are in his or her class. The teacher has no control of the parental involvement with each child. The teacher has no control over whether or not each child gets enough to eat at home or receives love or proper care. The teacher has no control over the fact that child poverty rate in the United States is at 22%, and despite what some groups with financial agendas might try to convince you of, poverty plays a huge role an a child's success in school. The studies show that the single greatest factor on class test scores is simply which students are in that particular class. In addition, everyday events can affect how a child does on a test. What if that child got in a fight with her best friend on the bus that morning on her way to school, or what if a boy's father is being deployed overseas this weekend. Are we to believe that if a teacher has several high-performing students in her class and has great scores one year, but gets a much more challenging class the next year and scores drop, that that teacher forgot how to teach or didn't try as hard? This is not even going into the argument of whether or not the test questions are even valid in measuring student performance. Assessing teacher performance based on student test scores would be like judging the success of a stock broker on how well the stock market did that month.
1 comment:
I wish that everyone would understand what it means for teachers to be judged on student test scores. The teacher has no control over which students are in his or her class. The teacher has no control of the parental involvement with each child. The teacher has no control over whether or not each child gets enough to eat at home or receives love or proper care. The teacher has no control over the fact that child poverty rate in the United States is at 22%, and despite what some groups with financial agendas might try to convince you of, poverty plays a huge role an a child's success in school. The studies show that the single greatest factor on class test scores is simply which students are in that particular class. In addition, everyday events can affect how a child does on a test. What if that child got in a fight with her best friend on the bus that morning on her way to school, or what if a boy's father is being deployed overseas this weekend. Are we to believe that if a teacher has several high-performing students in her class and has great scores one year, but gets a much more challenging class the next year and scores drop, that that teacher forgot how to teach or didn't try as hard? This is not even going into the argument of whether or not the test questions are even valid in measuring student performance. Assessing teacher performance based on student test scores would be like judging the success of a stock broker on how well the stock market did that month.
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