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Originally Posted by OPhiAGinger
There are great teachers who change a kid's life and there are teachers who just phone it in. I want a way to distinguish between the two and I think measuring outcome is the best way to do it.
But I also agree that you can't pin the failures of Timmy's last three teachers on this year's teacher. If he didn't master addition and subtration in K-2, there's no way he's gonna grasp multiplication in 3rd grade no matter how dedicated that teacher is. So instead of basing success/failure on the raw score of today's test, why can't we base it on the amount of progress he has demonstrated since last year's test? I read about a school district in southern California who was doing that and I love the idea. Then even if Timmy is not up to grade level on his math skills, Miss Landers is still rewarded for helping him master the basics that he missed before.
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The way I understand it, some forms of value added assessment do this. They are based on a growth model and just compare the performance of the students a teacher has this year with those exact kids' previous performance. Apparently what gets called valued added varies quite a bit and is weirdly variable from year to you, so I'd want to know more about the exact model to say for sure what would work. But it certainly seems possible.
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Originally Posted by AGDee
I don't know why everybody thinks the schools and the teachers have ANYTHING to do with why certain cities have a lot of students who are failing. I would hazard a guess that the teachers in the Detroit Public Schools primarily went to Eastern Michigan and Michigan State, just like in every other district in Michigan. I would hazard a guess that most of these teachers had essentially the same education. I know that they have all the same requirements to maintain their certification.
The difference between successful school districts and failing school districts is about:
a) Whether the families in those districts value education, make sure their students attend school every day and do their homework, and work with them to get that done
b) Whether those students live on the streets or in homes, whether the homes they live in have electricity, heat and water or not, whether those students have meals on the table
c) Whether students see any value in getting an education
d) Whether students even feel safe in school, or in their homes and neighborhoods
It's pretty clear that there are students who excel and go forward to do great things, even from the worst performing schools. Those students are getting what they need from someone... a mentor, a parent, a relative.. somebody. Somebody is taking care of those kids and somebody is doing something to help them see that getting a good education is important.
Schools aren't failing. Society is.
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While I agree with a lot of what you say here, schools still spend a lot of money on the education of their students, and some aren't showing particularly good results.
I don't think anyone commenting here would be comfortable saying, well, there are some schools at which we just can't expect the students to show measurable learning.
So what it is reasonable to expect schools to produce and how do you know if the are doing it?