Tell me again what test scores mean?

Tell me again what test scores measure?

There are lots of ways to measure how good a teacher is.   Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) all teachers were going to be evaluated based on the standardized test scores of their students.   This idea makes so little sense as to be ridiculous.  Yet state after state chased the money and began to link teacher evaluations to standardized test scores of students.   Now many, many states and school systems are rethinking the standard.

First of all, this requirement makes the assumption that there is a 1:1 correlation between teaching and learning by the student.  There are multiple reasons why kids don’t learn something.   Most obviously is the fact that the student may not have the ability to learn the material no matter how well it is taught.   Or there may be other aspects of the child’s life that are putting learning way down on the child’s priority list.  The child’s parents may be separating or fighting regularly.  The family may be suffering some economic trauma with income dramatically reduced.  A pet may be sick or has died.  A member of the family may be very ill.  When a child is experiencing life trauma, there isn’t much energy left over for learning.   Today, many schools have pacing guides that require the teacher to move on according to a pre-described schedule.  Teachers don’t have the luxury to go back and re-teach what the child has not learned.  Great teaching is wonderful and important but it can’t guarantee that the child will learn.  And some children need multiple exposures to the content before they learn it.

The idea was to use standardized tests as an independent measurement of what a child has learned.  Then teachers would be evaluated by this measurement.   The purpose was to move the measurement method to something more objective so that a principal wouldn’t rate a teacher highly because the principal liked the teacher or poorly is she didn't like the teacher.   Principals and school systems would need to use the objective test measure instead of some more subjective measures.   The fact is that standardized tests are not necessarily valid measures of what a child has learned.  They can measure what has been learned as measured by the test but as anyone who has ever been tested can tell you, much more was learned than was measured on the test. 

So how can good teaching be measured objectively if we insist that it be linked to learning.  Just maybe good teaching cannot be measured independently of each specific student. 

There is no teaching, good or bad, unless it is linked to learning.   And there is no such thing as the same model of teaching being “good” for all students.  What is perfect for some students is just the opposite for others.  Searching for an objective measure of good teaching is a fools’ errand.  Good teaching is very subjective.   Oh sure, there are guidelines and requirements for a good lesson or lesson plan.  These characteristics can easily be checked off by any evaluator.  But if you want to know what good teaching is, skip the test scores and just ask a couple of kids.  Their answers will be subjective and spot on.