Test are a consequence of a very real problem of evaluating teachers. Since neither parents nor children have in most public schools any choice over the school and teachers in it, regular consumer-driven quality controls that work on most markets are absent. However, quality problem is still real and existing - there are, obviously, good schools and bad schools, good teachers and bad teachers. Assume you are a well-intentioned educational administrator, and you want to improve the quality of education. How you do that? How you know which school is doing good and which is doing bad? How you know which teacher is beneficial and which is not? How you know which policy is beneficial and which is harmful? And most of all - how you do it in a way that is scalable to state and national levels and can be centralized and processed at huge scales (without which Department of Education has no data on which it can base its policies)? Obviously, standardized tests look like a perfect fit for this problem. So there's no mystery in this, it is a natural result.
Of course, there are a lot of deficiencies in this approach, which you can see and teachers can see it too. But given centralized, state-driven education system, what else you can do? You can not have absence of quality controls - this would have immense corrupting potential and the system would have incentive to deteriorate very quickly. You can not have individual approach - DoE can't account for each school in each small town, they just don't have resources for that. So with current approach, testing is inevitable.
While I appreciate that you have decided to test the teachers, and that you have unions which come in the way of it, I am greatly amused by the ill conceived plan to achieve your goal.
Its remarkable really. Years, decades of seeing kids die to suicide and cram pressure and this is what you choose.
So that you can test your teachers?
Anyway, your test doesn't test teachers, it tests students.
And then you assume it is a good proxy for teachers.
So just to be clear.
1) Tests are a perfect proxy for taking that test ->
2) Then they are a proxy for test taking ability in the student
3) Then a proxy for student understanding of the subject
4) And thence a proxy for teacher ability.
I'd understand if we were doing chemical analysis with 4 steps involved in the process.
But with human beings? Kids? The fundamental chaotic units of society?
I really have to point out that this is logic that gets most startups killed, or logic on which they pivot to something smarter.
I know you aren't the one responsible, but I really can't help but be perplexed. Once upon a time you guys were known as the place where "stuff just works."
Your older education system did a great job. Sure it may not have made everyone a rock star but frankly - not everyone is cut out to do so at that juncture in their life.
If you say that there is nothing else that can be done, then I accept and understand. But it is a terrible terrible outcome.
I didn't decide anything. I just explain that the decision to test is inevitable.
>> Years, decades of seeing kids die to suicide
Oh come on. You could at least wait couple of lines before you drop "you are a child killer" bomb. This is complete bullshit. There are very unfortunate cases of child suicide. It has nothing to do with existence and merit of evaluation system whatsoever and assigning to it responsibility for dying kids is a demagogy at its purest.
>>> And then you assume it is a good proxy for teachers.
Again, I don't assume anything - I say this criteria is inevitable, since the job of the teachers is to educate the children, and well-educated child is considered teacher's success, while poorly educated one is considered a failure. Since we don't have a way to test capability of teaches by supplying them with test kids to be taught in lab conditions - we have to test the actual kids to sample their level of education. It's not a choice, it's a logical consequence of current system of assumptions. It's as much choice as for a man jumping from a building it is a choice to hit the pavement.
>>> Your older education system did a great job.
It did great job for some and terrible job for others. It does the same now, only much more expensively. That is another reason why government is so eager to introduce testing - the costs are raising massively, the results aren't improving, and in some places are actually nothing short of disastrous - with schools releasing people that are completely illiterate. Every school complains it's underfunded but more funds do not seem to produce better outcomes. The budgets have limits, so it is no wonder that whoever distributes those budgets wants to see some metrics about how things are going instead of blindly throwing money in an hoping for the best. If something gets startups killed is exactly throwing money out without any way to measure if something was achieved or not.
Of course, there are a lot of deficiencies in this approach, which you can see and teachers can see it too. But given centralized, state-driven education system, what else you can do? You can not have absence of quality controls - this would have immense corrupting potential and the system would have incentive to deteriorate very quickly. You can not have individual approach - DoE can't account for each school in each small town, they just don't have resources for that. So with current approach, testing is inevitable.