Students Take the Test for Teachers

New York City education officials are developing up to 16 new standardized tests for 3rd through 12th graders. But these tests, unlike other standardized tests, will rank teachers, not students.

Costing roughly $25 million to create, these tests will be added to the battery of standardized taks that US students already take. In  The New York Times' current "Room for Debate," editors ask, What have we learned about tests as accountability tools for teacher performance? Why do school systems believe that tests are the answer to reforming education?

Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of Education at Stanford University, kicks of the debate by reminding us that there's long been a saying that "US students are the most tested, and the least examined, of any in the world." She also reminds us that top-scoring countries in student achievement, like Finland and Korea, have eliminated crowded testing schedules and improved their scores by doing so.  And the inevitable result? Not higher scores, smarter kids, or better teachers. Rather, teaching and curriculum further narrowed further, as teachers — and the surrounding system — focus more intensely on these tests.

All true, but as Michael J. Petrilli, another debater and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, point out, at least New York City is trying. Granted, as he puts it, city officials are pretty much "attacking a fly with a sledgehammer." Still, as Petrilli explains, "it’s only common sense that one element of [teacher] evaluations should be an assessment of how much students are learning under the teacher’s charge." For Petrilli, the answer isn't a move "to centralized, rules-based, bureaucratic evaluation models, as indicated by New York City’s decision to add a dozen new tests to collect more teacher performance data." Rather, the approach out to be to simply trust the principal. 

Another Reason to Love Skype: An Edu Platform to Connect Teachers

GOOD blogger Liz Dwyer recently highlighted Skype's latest effort:  Skype in the classroom, "a free global community created in response to, and in consultation with, the growing number of teachers" using the tool to help students learn.

Already, there's more than 7,000 teachers connected, 211 projects, and 377 resources. Listen to a teacher from Missouri talk about connecting with teachers via Skype or watch a a classroom exchange on earthquakes, between classrooms in Chile and the US.

Image credit: Skype

The New Teacher Project’s Case Against Quality-Blind Layoffs

The New Teacher project, a national nonprofit with aims to close the achievement gap by finding ways to ensure high-need students get top-notch teachers, makes a case against quality-blind layoffs. While the case isn't surprising, the following excerpt, from a February 2011 report, is:

Fully 40 percent of the nation’s teachers (1.25 million) work in one of 14 states—Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin—where it’s currently illegal for schools to consider job performance in making layoff decisions. Ten of these states are facing budget deficits greater than 10 percent, meaning that layoffs are a real possibility.

Image source: The New Teacher project (click to enlarge image)