@DC #42

Yes. You stated what I would have said better than I could have. Thanks!

We’d be reward­ing a teacher’s abil­ity to play admin­is­tra­tive games, and not so much their abil­ity to actu­ally teach.

Exactly.

From what I’m gathering, it isn’t a case of the perfect being an enemy of the good. The problem doesn’t seem so much to be that switching to a merit-based system with standardized tests wouldn’t be perfect. The argument seems instead to be that, at best, the switch would be no better than what we currently have (almost certainly, it would be no better for the students) and, at worst, it would be actually harmful — to the students, the teachers, and the system as a whole.

Unless the identified problems are solved — or at least addressed — using standardized testing as a metric for teacher employment and advancement means that students on both ends of the ability curve are shortchanged (probably worse than they are today), and that active selection would mean teachers with the most political pull get the students who would be most likely to show improvement anyway, regardless of what system is in place. We’d be rewarding a teacher’s ability to play administrative games, and not so much their ability to actually teach.

Further, there’s that “unintended consequences” thing. An important lesson out of the “No Child Left Behind” program is that big changes will, perhaps inevitably, lead to big problems. That isn’t always a reason to not do something. But it certainly is a reason to be cautious and to attempt to anticipate problems. We already have an excellent example (“No Child”) of having done it wrong.

If you think teach­ers don’t know at a gran­u­lar level which kids are the excep­tional kids (at either end of the spec­trum) then you’ve likely never sat in a teacher’s lounge.

I haven’t, but really it’s not relevant if they know or not. Let them trade students if they want, since both parties have to consider themselves to be better off with the trade than without.

If the merit met­ric is based on test score improve­ment on a stan­dard­ized test, then many teach­ers will not want to teach the gifted class, because every stu­dent in there will already have vir­tu­ally maxed their score on the stan­dard­ized test, else they wouldn’t be in the gifted class.

I want to caution against the use of the phrase “standardized test”. As one who performs much better on the traditional SAT-style standardized tests than his abilities would warrant, I understand the limits of the 1950s-style tests. There are better options out there.

In any case, students can “max out” their scores only if the exam doesn’t cover sufficient scale. That’s a problem with the specific exam, not the idea of examining people.

Once again, I’m afraid I am seeing an awful lot of “perfect is the enemy of the good” arguments. I’m not arguing that competency metrics are perfect; I’m arguing that they’re better than the nothing we have today.

@shortchain

The success of Montessori methods depends much more on the teacher even than standard methods, because the education path is more fluid and self-directed. Also, I think the official method spends too much time on meeting the kids’ “spiritual” needs rather than educational needs. For disadvantaged kids who feel worthless and incapable, such spiritual nourishment can be worthwhile to give them a greater sense of self-worth and accomplishment, but most kids don’t need quite that much self-promotion, especially in today’s world of participation trophies for everybody. For average kids, there isn’t much difference in the eventual results (K-6th grade) between standard teaching and Montessori methods, but the real differences emerge for kids a standard deviation or two away from average in either direction, because they get a more personalized instruction that actually addresses their exceptionalism. One of my friends in HS attended a Montessori school through 8th grade, and I was jealous that he’d already learned calculus when he was 11, whereas I had to fight my school to give me something beyond repetition of the same arithmetic classes over and over and over long after I’d mastered long division…

Perhaps Monotreme’s suggestion of certificates for each level of mastery could work for students outside the range of normal, but I suspect it wouldn’t really help that much if some kid masters all of the arithmetic certificates by the end of, say, 2nd grade, and none of the elementary school teachers are qualified to teach any math beyond that. Then what? Does the 7 year old get to sit in on the HS algebra class? How do they handle busing him/her over to the HS for that class and then back to the elementary school for art and reading classes? What if the kid is ready for calculus and AP physics, but reading at a 3rd grade level and can’t tie his own shoes? Or what if it’s the opposite, a kid who reads and writes like James Joyce but can’t add two plus two? This is a problem that many schools already face in trying to place kids in grades. There isn’t an easy solution, but at least the Montessori method is prepared to acknowledge that kids learn at different paces and through different ways across different subjects.

What is the average cost, per pupil, of a Montessori education?  My impression is that it costs significantly more.  There is a  large percentage of the tax-paying public which believes we are already spending too much on education, so if it comes to spending more, there may be no sale.

Max,
a) That ship has already sailed.  The genie is out of the bottle.  Closing the barn doors now is pointless.  How many more of these do you need to hear?
b) Technology is a two-edged sword.  As with any such sword, its statistical effect is to increase the variance, as it produces even more spectacular over– or under-performance.  One thing I notice is that time management skills are more important now than they used to be.  It used to be, if you wanted to waste time, you needed the help of a few trusted companions (or bad company).  Nowadays, you can just fire up your trusty computer.

So, technology has made people more effective, which, when it comes to wasting time, has made them less productive.  But you can’t take away the minuses without harming the pluses.  And neither you nor anyone else has a scalpel sharp enough to cut in exactly the right place to sever the demarcation.

@DC

What I would like to see is a true rev­o­lu­tion in edu­ca­tion, wherein
stu­dents get indi­vid­ual atten­tion, and are moved and chal­lenged at
their own pace — rather than being locked into rigid cur­ric­ula and
tests depend­ing on how old they are.

In other words, you like the Montessori approach?

@Michael

Per­haps, but I don’t envi­sion teach­ers get­ting to have
suf­fi­ciently gran­u­lar infor­ma­tion to be able to cherry-​​pick
spe­cific stu­dents.

If you think teachers don’t know at a granular level which kids are the exceptional kids (at either end of the spectrum) then you’ve likely never sat in a teacher’s lounge. By midway through kindergarten, the first and second grade teachers know which of the kids will be their biggest challenges in the next couple of years, and so forth through the grades. Teachers at the elementary school in my home district frequently bartered for students when seating the classes, and one third grade teacher refused to have my brother in her class, for example. Teachers who never had me in any of their classes at the 2500+ student high school that I only attended for one year knew of me and expected my younger siblings to be like me.  Teachers talk, and they know who the “smart” and “problem” kids are.

If the merit metric is based on test score improvement on a standardized test, then many teachers will not want to teach the gifted class, because every student in there will already have virtually maxed their score on the standardized test, else they wouldn’t be in the gifted class. Some teachers may even refuse to teach specific students purely because the student has scored so high or so low. If the merit metric is based only on final scores, then the converse happens, and teachers will all want to teach the gifted class, because it will be the easiest to get top scores from students who already score highly, and even fewer will want to work with disadvantaged kids than already happens.

Also, from an educational theory perspective, standardized tests may do a good job of testing whether a student can regurgitate specific pieces of data, but they do a very poor job of assessing the students’ ability to think, and teaching kids critical thinking skills *should* be a key part of any teacher’s classroom objectives. Because of the nature of the way critical thinking skills develop, a brilliant 5th grade teacher may provide the seed that doesn’t actually blossom until 7th or 8th grade when suddenly the kid realizes what their 5th grade teacher was saying all along. So, the 7th or 8th grade teacher would get the credit (based on test results) for the outstanding work accomplished by the 5th grade teacher.

Testing could be a component of determining merit pay for teachers, but with a whole pile of caveats and exceptions and adjustments and conditions.