Why should education be a state controlled issue?

[BmorePat87]

(08-12-2016, 11:21 AM)fredtoast Wrote: For whatever reason what teachers were doing was failing.  There have to be some way to judge their progress.  I just don't know a better way.

Perhaps instead of just complaining about tesst teachers should propose some other type of test that meausres "critical thinking".

There have to be some standards that should be met.  Otherwise we have a bunch of teachers producing students that know nothing.  Teachers are no different from any otherr people.  they don't want to admit when they are wrong or not doing their jobs.  We can't just let them say "Yeah, your kid can fails at math, history, and reading comprehension, but I did a great job teaching him 'critical thinking'."

My evaluation process is based off of the Danielson Framework. It measures my instruction and classroom environment via observations and my lesson preparation and professional responsibilities via artifacts that are collected throughout the year. This counts for a percent of my yearend score. In addition to that, I choose two "Student Learning Objectives". These are two skills I want to teach and demonstrate student progress in by the end of the year. One is content based and one is literacy based. I personally use political cartoon analysis and argumentative writing. I then select a rubric (I modify the county rubric and use that) and I give a baseline. Students are graded and then goals are set based on their initial grade. 

http://www.ciu20.org/cms/lib07/PA01916263/Centricity/Domain/13/FFT%20SmartCard.jpg


There is no perfect answer to "how can we measure student and teacher performance" with just one metric. The Kasich mentality that teachers just sit around complaining about things instead of doing is asinine and insulting to a whole profession. It also demonstrates ignorance towards the current state of education. What we do know is that requiring schools to focus on standardize testing is not helping our kids be better learners. It is requiring teachers to focus less on building necessary skills to be successful and focus more on teaching to a test. 

Those standards that should be met are addressed in the Common Core State Standards. This is why we are teaching kids the why of math in addition to the how. It's why the standards for social studies focus on skills like comparing sources, evaluating the validity of sources, using evidence, and critically reading. If your kid comes out of my US History class understanding how to critically read a document but doesn't know what year WWI ended, he is far better prepared for college and life than the kid who can't read a document but knows the order of the Presidents. There's no "Know-Nothing" in my class... we start AFTER the Civil War.