<p>I recognize Ravitch can be controversial, but this seemed like a topic that would be of interest to many parents here. Ravitch calls it madness to rely on a system of teacher accountability based on student test scores.</p>
<p>Ravitch</a> Says New Evaluation System Is 'Madness' ? SchoolBook</p>
<p>“Of course, teachers should be evaluated. They should be evaluated by experienced principals and peers. No incompetent teacher should be allowed to remain in the classroom. Those who cant teach and cant improve should be fired. But the current frenzy of blaming teachers for low scores smacks of a witch-hunt, the search for a scapegoat, someone to blame for a faltering economy, for the growing levels of poverty, for widening income inequality.”</p>
<p>Completely agreed. Yes, we need to remove poor teachers from the classroom just as we should remove poor performing doctors and lawyers, etc. Every profession has their bottom-dwellers. But I agree with Ravitch that it’s become a witch hunt. Last week the NYT published an article claiming that 50% of children born to mothers under 30 were born into single-parent households. Are these kids set up to succeed? Can a teacher who has 30+ kids in a classroom, more and more of whom come with emotional and academic needs, really meet everyone’s needs? Is it fair to compare teachers working with high-risk populations with those teaching in affluent suburbs? I’ve seen some bright energetic young people go into teaching and become exhausted and disillusioned by increasing class size and mandates. And now they are told that they are often solely responsible for poor test scores. Really???</p>
<p>The problems with education are complicated, widespread and depend so much on geography and/or socioeconomic status. Focusing most of the blame on poorly performing and/or poorly prepared teachers is like blaming kids for being hungry.</p>
<p>"…Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions: How can you keep track of students’ performance if you don’t test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice?</p>
<p>The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America’s school reformers are trying to do."</p>
<p>[What</a> Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success - Anu Partanen - National - The Atlantic](<a href=“What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Atlantic”>What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>Ha ha…Klements, you just made some heads explode with those links!</p>
<p>Singapore has a nice model that does use test results. About 1/5th of the annual teacher’s evaluation is based on test score improvements. The other 4/5 are based on “how” the teacher teaches, measured by an observer using a guided scorecard of observed behaviors. (The other impressive thing about Singapore is that no one can even enter the teaching profession unless ranked in the top 30% of his or her high school class!)</p>
<p>We should not rely solely on test scores:
<p>I do think teachers should be measured in part on test score increases. Teachers who achieved higher than average test score increases in the past usually continue to do so. That means test score increases do tell us something valid about teacher performance.</p>
<p>We’ve chosen to put our children in prep schools. In prep schools, the heads can fire teachers. They can dismiss students. One hopes they use good judgement and mercy in their deliberations. Having chosen to leave the public system, I am not going to throw rocks at an attempt to improve it. The public schools are placing too much faith in testing. On the other hand, I can’t agree with Ravitch’s position. </p>
<p>It is very hard to fire a teacher, especially in New York. (Google “New York City Rubber Rooms” for a quick introduction.) Not all teachers are perfect. Ravitch claims that
I’m sure we can all agree on apple pie and motherhood, too–but she knows that incompetent teachers aren’t being fired at present. She does not propose any method to address that problem. </p>
<p>A large part of the problem is the fact that many politicians send their children and grandchildren to private or parochial schools, or the very best of the public. [Their</a> kids, your kids - Chicago Tribune](<a href=“http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-12-15/news/ct-edit-schools-20101215_1_private-schools-charter-school-operator-school-board-president]Their”>http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-12-15/news/ct-edit-schools-20101215_1_private-schools-charter-school-operator-school-board-president) Their children will not be lumped in with the “at-risk population.”</p>
<p>I think the article about Finland completely missed the mark. Finland is a society where much is equal(as in most Scandinavian countries), income, benefits, people’s outlook, religion, ethnicity. They can easily do what is described in the article. The immigration that the article says has doubled in the past decade is not even close to immigration in the US. Most of immigrants to Finland come from the Baltic States (Estonia Lithuania Latvia) and Russia. Vast majority of those are well educated themselves, and know how to educate their kids. They dont have issues as some of the immigrants in the US - parents without limbs from Rwanda, etc. The article also does not mention that everyone must speak the same language in school, there are no ESL classes. And on and on.</p>
<p>It’s true that the article zeroes in on immigration as a measure of homogeneity and while Finland actually has a lot of Muslim immigrants (in fact about 1/4 of all immigrants are from Africa and Asia) and it’s not fully homogenous, immigration stats are a poor measure of overall diversity, particularly the kind of homegrown diversity (ethnic, social, cultural, racial, linguistic, etc.) that is a hallmark of the United States. The United States is very different, indeed.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s really any chance that private schools and universities will be abolished as education is nationalized. Nor do I think that was what the article was driving at. In broader terms, I think it speaks to how we might want to reframe our goals and measures, even within school districts, and how – barring that unlikely scenario in which all education becomes publicly-funded – there should be more support for lifting up and putting public education on a footing akin to the private options (as opposed to gutting it or letting it fall to waste or privatizing it like the prison system so that it’s managed as a profit center where operating costs are slashed to maximize shareholder value as the private operator’s top priority).</p>
<p>What’s good for Finland isn’t good for the United States…but what works in Finland can prove to be valuable information when trying to figure out ways to improve education in the United States.</p>