Teachers are good little soldiers. We do what we are told even if it is against our better judgement. If we speak up to the powers that be and let them know that a program won't work, it falls upon deaf ears. There had been times in my own career, which spanned four decades, that teachers were force-fed a new strategy for teaching a particular subject and had to witness a generation of students lose ground before another fad appeared. If you want to know what is wrong with our system of education in this country, place some of the blame on the complacency of the public school teacher. In retrospect, I should have made more noise, and organized my colleages to demand more of a seat at the table.
If you present a methodology that is opposed by the majority of you teachers, it is doomed to failure. Superintendents and building administrators don't understand that statement. They think they can mandate a system of learning to their faculty and it will just happen. Applying this business model to education just doesn't work. The teacher is entrusted with an awesome responsibility that takes place behind closed doors. They cannot be monitored every minute of the day. There is a blind trust that takes place in those classrooms and teachers cannot sell to their students what they believe is wrong.
So now we are being judged on the test scores of our students as if that is the true measure of a good teacher. In reality, testing may be the measure of the materials and methodology forced upon us by the administration. Maybe they should be judged by those test scores. After all, teachers just deliver the program, material, and text selected by the administration, we are just the worker bees.
Testing was once used to evaluate the programs of study chosen by the district, not the teacher. Teachers do the best they can to deliver kowledge to their students, however, when students don't have any interest in learning, don't cooperate, don't do their homework, don't have the ability or background in some cases, don't study, and don't care, is it the teacher's fault? If a doctor prescribes medication and the patient refuses to take it, does the doctor get judged because the patient does not improve? The idea of evaluating teachers on the scores of their students is just as absurd.
Teachers constantly evaluate their students on material covered in their classrooms. They don't need a state test to let them know who is learning. When a student is doing poorly, teachers inform the parents and administrators that there is a problem. It is called a progress report or report card! When parents refuse to take responsibility for their child's lack of effort and when the school does not allocate the resources to grant a struggling student extra support, why should the teacher be the one to be evaluated? Teachers know if there is a problem with learning within the first week of school and they don't need a state test to figure it out. When the student, parents, and school district are not doing their jobs, why should the classrom teacher be the only one held responsible?
Evaluating teachers according to state test scores is so wrong on so many different levels. Some students will fill in any answer to be the first one done, some will fill in any answer because time is running out, and some will just leave it blank because they don't care. Meanwhile, a teacher's career may hang in the balance. Applying this business model to the teaching-learning process is a disgrace, and it shows a lack of respect for the profession. But teachers will just passively accept this new model without objection. They shrug their shoulders and feel powerless.
The politicians who make these rules have never taught in a classroom. Most administrators have had very limited time in the classroom. In fact, the commissioners, Board of Regents, and the Secretary of Education have no experience teaching or very little time in the classroom. Yet these are the people we have making the rules that will affect our classrooms, our jobs, and ultimately our students. After all this testing, why is it that colleges need to offer remediation to incoming freshmen and the SAT scores continue to decline?
More testing is not the answer, it is the problem. Pretesting, test preparation, state testing, and the actual testing in the classroom is rediculous but teachers will just follow orders like good, little soldiers. Until teachers rise up in protest, nothing will change. We need to express our outrage more vocally through demonstrations at school board meetings and PTA meetings. We need to inform the public that testing our children is not in their best interests, in fact, it is hurting our students. Overtesting is a detriment to learning and should never be used to evaluate teachers. We are turning our children off to the joy of learning because of all this testing and we have managed to suck the joy out of teaching. Wake up, America!
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