YOUR VIEW: Teachers union president has deserted membership
The first thing a union leader must remember is to protect members from injustice. It is, apparently, the first thing Paul Toner, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, forgot.
At flashpoint is Toner's position — the rank and file have not voted on it — that using test scores from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System is a legitimate measure of a classroom teacher's competency.
Diane Ravitch, a former proponent of high-stakes testing and an assistant secretary of education under George H. W. Bush, speaks to this highly volatile and controversial position in her recent book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."
"The problem (is) the misuse of testing for high-stakes purposes, the belief that tests could identify ... which students should be held back, which teachers ... should fired or rewarded, and which schools should be closed — and the idea that these changes would inevitably produce better education," wrote Ravitch. She goes on to say, "... testing (is) not the problem. If testing inspires a degree of loathing, it is because it has become the crucial hinge on which turns the fate of students and the reputations and futures of their teachers."
One of the problems with using the MCAS as a measuring stick of teacher effectiveness is that MCAS, in the opinion of many critics throughout the commonwealth, is a flawed instrument. A list of its debits is long and