How Not to Evaluate Teachers

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/11/how-not-to-evaluate-teachers/

Christine Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
November 10th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I think that it is quite ridiculous to think that the ability of a teacher’s effectiveness in a classroom could be measured by these standardized achievement tests! I’m currently in grad school for teaching and the more I learn about standardized testing the more irritated I get because of the simple fact that one test should not be the end all be all of a teacher’s career and/or tenure. This has got to change. A teacher’s job is to ensure that their students not only learn, but want to learn, and are able to think critically in order to become productive members of society. According to the state and federal governments, however, it seems as if the primary job of the teacher is to teach to the test. If the students fail, the teacher fails and that just isn’t right. These tests are biased and unfair to many minority and low-achieving students so how could they possibly be fair to the teachers. Also the results from these tests do not help the teacher to be able to change their methods because it is hard to tell exactly why the students are failing. I understand that standardized testing is a necessity, but I don’t feel that they are fair to the students or the teachers. Something needs to change in order to have a better, more effective educational community.