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Re:To Fix America's Education Bureaucracy, We Need to Destro... by wisty on Saturday April 07, 2012 @10:02AM (#3810888)
Fixing the metrics rarely works. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/09.html

OK, if you want a metric that might work ... testing a year after the teacher is gone.

If you test while the teacher is in charge, they will encourage the student to game the test. This has short-term gain and long-term pain. If you reward teachers for how well the student retains their knowledge (long term), it should work better.

That won't stop teachers pressuring their co-workers to teach to the test, or principals from telling teachers to teach the test, but it helps reduce it. You could rate schools on how well students do 1 year after leaving, to keep the principals in line. I'd guess teachers will just fob off their co-workers.

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