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Re:North Carolina teacher's resignation letter by lifeisstillgood on Monday October 29, 2012 @01:59PM (#4713571)
Testing is only any good if students are assessed at the beginning and end of each year. We care about the difference a teacher makes in the lives and skills of students. Those that make the most difference get the most reward.

But hey - that might be ridiculously easy to game - every which way.

(Personally I would get my whole class pissed out of their brains on the first test, and teach normally for the rest of the year. With any luck I will see an improvement)

And finally - testing is supposed to be about testing the students. Not the teachers. Every Head knows which ones are good and which ones are crap.

Re:North Carolina teacher's resignation letter by acdha on Monday October 29, 2012 @05:04PM (#4714436)
Even this isn't enough: teachers suffer from small sample sizes and tests which attempt to reduce very complex realities to simple numbers. Imagine teaching 70 students, some of whom have significant problems outside your control (e.g. not showing up for class) - if that number changes by just a couple of students either way, your evaluation can go up or down completely due to random variation.

At this point, I'd also note that the people running the numbers tend to have very limited math skills – a great way to recoup some of the money we're pouring into standardized testing would be for each district to hire expert statisticians, scientists, etc. so the comparisons could be done by people who understand how to avoid measurement and analysis errors.