The Innovative Educator: 3 ways to measure students, teachers, & schools without standardized tests:
by noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Nielsen)
A theme at this week’s Education Nation was the failure of standardized tests as a measurement of student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Those who know better know that standardized tests tell us more about a student’s language acquisition, parental involvement, poverty level, and developmental level than they do about teacher effectiveness or student ability. But, it is hard for anyone to imagine how we would possible assess student, teacher, and school effectiveness without the mindless drill, kill, bubblefill that forces students to memorize and regurgitate on demand. Yet we all know these are not the skills that our students need for success in life.
So how might we measure students, teachers, and schools if there were no tests? There are countless ways besides the mega-billion testing industry model, but here are three ideas for our policy makers like Mitt Romney who admit they don't know a better model than a testing system.
- Measure student achievement via authentic teacher assessmentTeachers already have
