Smarter Tests Make for Smarter Schools

Our current standardized, high stakes tests do a disservice to our students.  They don't measure student growth and they penalize students who develop at a rate other than what society deems to be the norm.  We should get rid of those tests and replace them with a testing system that actually measures student progress from year to year rather than measuring if schools can meet basic minimum thresholds.

A testing system that measures progress  would help to better identify teachers and practices that have value.  It would also help students see how their learning builds from year to year.  It would provide relevant and meaningful feedback for teachers.  In short, it would provide better data from which students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the greater community could make better decisions.     

I like one particular option that creates a testing system similar to that of the GRE.  It would be computerized and would work to locate the level of the students knowledge by adjusting the difficulty of questions and concepts based on student responses.  To do this the test would need to take the skills necessary for success in a discipline and break them down into their component parts.  Those parts would then have to be categorized in terms of difficulty from the first testing year up until the last testing year.  For example, all the math concepts taught from say second grade through twelfth grade would be included.  Multiple question types would need to be created for each concept and then all of them would be compiled into the program.  Students would take the test from the same program every year.

Right now, the current tests don't measure student growth for smart students very accurately so we don't have a picture of how much they actually learned from their teacher.  Because each test given each year is different, you can not measure student growth from year to year with much accuracy.  By giving the same test, year after year, you start to get a picture of students learning growth.

I am looking forward to the day that education starts getting smarter about how it collects data.             

 

How Teacher Pay Scales Impact My Life

So I mentioned recently that teachers are paid based on years of experience and number of college credits earned.  I also mentioned that research has shown that these two categories have no correlation to student performance.  That means that a teacher with ten years of teaching experience and a bachelors degree could teach just as well or better than a teacher with 30 years of experience and a masters degree.

I am currently working with in this system to try and increase my pay.  I am taking the last class I need to hit the threshold for the next pay bump.  I do this because I see no other way to increase my earnings as a teacher.  I am not patient enough to wait for the yearly increases.   Particularly not early in my career where they are less frequent. 

That is another disappointment that I have with teacher pay.  My division's pay scale offers no raise for teachers in their 1, 2, or 3 years of teaching.  Yet research has shown that these are incredibly formative years for new teachers.  The first pay bump comes at the start of your fourth year, which here in Virginia, is when you earn your long term contract.

I am looking forward to the day when pay in education is a reflection of your worth as a teacher of students and not a reflection of your years in the profession and your level of formal education.