Standardized testing fills the need to administrators and elected officials to have simple short term metrics to in which to rank schools and students. However, everything we know about standardized testing is that they are a poor metric at best, and at worst harmful to many of the individual students. The NHL figured out and embraced advanced metrics before academia. Schools are not meeting real world expectation, forcing greater pressure on universal standards. We are creating a culture of regurgitation education, instead of creative critical thinkers. We require teachers to receive advanced degrees and study teaching methods, but regiment course standards and methods to a point where the structure dictates the teaching. We know not every student learns the same, but we try to structure all teaching methods into one format. Then we give teacher unrealistic classroom sizes. Many classrooms are set to a size where a teacher should be able to manage the classroom. Manage a classroom, is not the same teaching students. Too much time is spent by educators managing a classroom. The obvious solution and one of the most simplistic solutions is smaller class sizes and empowering teachers. New York State has reduced the number of public school teachers by 35,000 in the last four years alone. Transportation costs continue to eat more of a schools budget while the number of educators continues to be reduced, that’s crazy. If you want to improve teacher evaluations, then allow them to teach. The more the state controls the classroom, and the larger the class sizes, and the more homogenous the lessons become, the worse our education gets. It’s not an all inclusive solution, and it doesn’t solve everything, but it’s the obvious first step. Smaller class sizes and empowering teachers. Creative, critical thinking will get us way farther than multiple choice regurgitation and test taking strategies.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 17:19:42 +0000
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