P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney!

This week I watched a webinar about "Reforming Education Reform" from the Learning 2.0 Conference.  One of the interesting things discussed during the webinar was the notion of assessment and school competition.  In an effort to improve the level of education across the nation there have been major efforts to determine the best way to evaluate teacher and student performance.  One of the simplest and most straightforward methods of evaluating is using assessments like standardized tests.  One of the panelists expressed his dislike for this push towards emphasizing assessments by declaring "To assess means we have to measure which is to say everything can and should be quantified" which he clearly disagreed with and at least on the surface I do too.  One of the issues in the recent Chicago teachers strike was that they didn't want to be evaluated based on the standardized test scores of their students.  To an outsider standardized tests may be a great way to assess teachers’ ability, but when one thinks more deeply and critically it is clear that this is an innately flawed form of measuring teachers' abilities and effectiveness.  After speaking with several current teachers, including my mentor teacher who worked in Chicago public schools for nearly 8 years, it has become clear to me that to the panelist was right it expressing disdain for the belief that everything can be quantified.  Yes I can look at the standardize test scores of students and extrapolate from that data how effective or ineffective a particular teacher may have been, but to do so in unfair to the teachers in question.  Standardized test do not take into effect things like the students knowledge before coming into a teachers classroom, what their home life is like and other potential issues that effect student achievement and occur outside the classroom.  My mentor teacher spoke of how many of his older students worked while in school to help out their families or watched their younger siblings.  He also described how the students had to worry about how to get to and from school and navigate the dangerous parts of the city, issues that many of their peers would never have to deal with so they were inherently behind the 8-ball before ever stepping into his classroom.  One of the results of this focus on assessment is a sense of competition that's becoming increasingly important we have now become obsessed with comparing my school vs. your school, my state vs. another state, America vs. other countries and have begun "conflating excellence with beating people".  Sadly the panelist has come to the conclusion that “as long as we're thinking about who’s beating whom everyone’s losing" so I personally hope this changes to a more effective and accurate form of evaluation, or if we must use this assessment competition heavy model that he is wrong, but what he says makes a lot of sense in my mind.

Smorgasbord Fun Fact: Fish cough.