Teaching to a different test
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Michelle Rhee, former Washington, D.C., schools chief, is a proponent of tests that evaluate teachers against "clear, rigorous performance expectations."
MORE EDUCATION
For years now, a war has been brewing between two sides of the education world.
One side argues that standardized tests are necessary to evaluate teacher performance, and the other argues that these tests are an inadequate measure of the hard work that teachers pour into their classrooms.
With the recent release of the movie "Waiting for 'Superman,' " that war has spilled out of the classrooms and into the mainstream. And at the heart of this war is the commonly heard argument that standardized tests cause teachers to "teach to the test."
"Teaching to the test" has become a derogatory phrase, conjuring up images of teachers and schools - driven by the knowledge that they are being judged based on their students' performance on standardized tests - throwing out engaging and creative lessons and replacing them with rote memorization techniques and tricks that somehow get students to answer the questions correctly without mastering the content.
The conclusion that all too many draw is that to prevent teaching to the test, we must eliminate the tests altogether or at least dramatically de-emphasize their role. But the reality is that we need these tests. The best way to ensure that our children are actually
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/31/INFT1G2IAQ.DTL&type=education#ixzz148PF2dCr