Testing teaching, teaching testing
Feb 22nd 2012, 15:07 by M.S.
DIANE RAVITCH, the education-reform advocate famous for having long advocated chartered schools and centralised assessment of teachers only to turn against both reforms in the past few years, has a post at the New York Review of Books railing against New York's new testing standards. The state moved last week to conduct a centralised assessment of all public-school teachers on the basis of whether they have improved student performance year to year, and to fire teachers who fail to do so. New York had to make this move to meet criteria for the $700m it will receive under the federal Race to the Top programme. Ms Ravitch contends it's a disaster because it's actually based on standardised test scores, rather than "other measures, such as classroom observations by principals, independent evaluators, and peers, plus feedback from students and parents", even though those latter measures are supposed to count