Our schools are performing terribly.
What do you suggest?
Ignore the pay for performance or improve on it if you like.
The way this scheme is laid out, Florida will have more kids receiving inflated scores, more kids taught to the test, instead of educated to actually use their minds. This remedy codifies an incorrect choice to solve the underlying problem. The fruits of this mistaken approach to improving the quality of the educational system pass through our workplaces on a regular basis. In my experience it is too often the case that applicants with good paper qualifications try to gain employment, only to be thrown during interview by the simplest of questions requiring the ability to demonstrate understanding of a concept critical to your business. (Which in my case is a scientific and technical enterprise). My assessment is that these individuals have been taught to the test, rather than taught to learn and use their minds. For example, they may know the equation for pH, but have absolutely no notion of what the -ve Log of Hydrogen Ion Concentration really means. Such lack of understanding of a basic concept put into practice would have dire consequences.
You ask "What do you suggest?" That is a fair question, though
in part you are asking this from a position that improving on pay for performance remains a viable option to overcome the intrinsic frailties of the existing system. "Ignore the pay for performance
or improve on it if you like." I am not going to pretend to have all the answers, I'll gladly share my perspective.
I'll go with tossing pay for performance into the trash can of history, hopefully before it does more damage than the already too great reliance on standardized testing (to which the teacher's performance will increasingly be linked).
From my perspective improving on pay for performance blesses a premise which is seriously flawed. In my view these are mere symptomatic relief, adopted in lieu of a more challenging, demanding, and politically unpopular solution. A solution that would raise the value of our graduated students.
So - let us go back to very beginning of the debate on education if you will. Before any child was left behind, before numeric metrics from standardized tests of student attainment became the crutch on which politicians, teachers and school administrators all leant. Let's do that with a clean slate, an open mind and a determination to find solutions, not palliatives. Part of that approach must be to define correctly the role of schools, and of educators. Also, the use of standardized test and their value, however large or limited, should be agreed upon and universally understood.
Here is my short list of the role of schools - what they should do ...
- Teach kids reading, writing and arithmetic (the core skills)
- Teach students the lexicon of the world in which they will live in its diverse forms and disciplines (the nomenclature of our lives)
- Once the above is done every effort should be devoted to teaching kids to think, learning to learn, think and to apply that gift between their ears to problems
How then do we determine if the schools are living up to the above goals? Are standardized tests part of that determination? In my view, yes, but with a rather strict reservation. Standardized tests are useful most to a teacher when addressing the first two aspects of the school's role. They can help a teacher determine the degree to which a student has learnt the core skills and lexicon - which can can lead to better structure and approach to bring students, whose lexical or core skills are lacking, up to expectations.
In truth, the better measure of a student's aptitude is their ability to apply the concepts they have learnt and understood to new problems. Not the ones "from the book." This leans more closely to what are termed portfolio or proficiency tests. Problems demanding understanding of core concepts are placed in front of a student, their ability to find their way to a (or the) solution is not measured on a yes/no or one of A, B, C, or D basis. Think more in terms of a project, or an essay, than a multiple choice test.
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In short, I would give my approval only to an approach that totally rethinks our children's needs, those of the teachers and those of society. An approach which seeks to have students demonstrate how they think in equal or greater measure than simple rote recitation of disparate factoids, book problems, or lexical terms.
