Teaching to Test

New legislation in many states are calling for new teacher evaluations. In this effort, they are spinning the world to improve teaching. This improvement is solely based on teacher evaluations. If a student performs well in your classroom, you are going to be able to teach.

This is not a holistic approach to education. These new teacher evaluations appear to be a dead end for the overall system of education.

If you base your entire system merely on how well the teacher performs I wonder what type of teacher are you going to get?

I think that we are ignoring a greater aspect of education. Education has always and will continue to be a controversial issue. The controversy started many years ago after the government took over the role of educators. As this role unfolded, parents began to realize that the government was not providing for the educational needs of the gifted.

Teaching was now based on the classroom. Your teaching style was to show all the students how to perform, learn and test. If you had a student that was excelling, you had to slow him down so other students could catch up. If you had a student who was slow, you attempted to speed them up. Often times this created more conflict in the classroom. With the growing classroom, this become more difficult the more students that were assigned to your classroom.

To resolve this conflict, parents began to realize that if they wanted their child to succeed, they were going to have to provide for their child. Homeschooling was around, but it did not afford the opportunities. Parents then began to create their own school. They found buildings, teachers, administrators and the re birth of private schools began to grow.

So if you could afford to send your child to a private school, they were going to get the education that you thought was best. If you could not afford the private school, then you were forced to use the public school system.

There is definitely a difference between public and private schools. But is this difference based on teacher evaluations and performance?

I think that many teachers are questioning what this will do to society.

The 'no child left behind' laws are definitely a challenge for teachers. How can you teach when a child has limited support at home? How can you teach a child who has priorities elsewhere? How can you teach a child when their social network is more important than their education?

In private schools, there is contract law. Contracts are everywhere within the private school. Administrators, teachers, students and parents all sign contracts. These contracts provide for conduct, teaching styles, salaries, costs, you name it, the private school has thought about it.

In public schools, there are not contracts, except for the teachers. Often provided for by teacher associations requiring provisions for the job. None of the public school teacher contracts have any of the provisions that private teachers have.

Does this make a difference? I think that this does make a tremendous amount of difference. If a child, in a private school does not adhere to the contractual agreement, they are often removed from the school.

What does the public school have. Discipline that often does not work. Sometimes a public school student will get into trouble so they can receive discipline. This gets them out of the classroom, away from teachers they have a personal problem. Or they may not like the subject or the expectations of the classroom or teachers.

So government is trying to reinvent the wheel. They created the 'no child left behind' and now we are moving towards teacher evaluations. The ideas are to provide for every child and to make sure that all teachers perform.

Well, you can not provide for a student if there is no support at home. You can not provide for a student if the parents are unable to help teach. You can not provide for a student if there family is resistant to change.

Parents have become a demanding bread. Parents will spout out a statement "I know what is best for my child, and your teaching method, your discipline is not what my child needs."

When children hear this, they think, I don't have to listen to my teacher, my Mom and Dad know best. What this creates is a discipline issue. This disciplinary issue is not only at school, but spills out to the community.

So why would I post something about education on a radio car blog? These decisions that the experts are making are having a strong impact on our performance in the radio car industry.

When a child hears their parent defend them, they learn that they are important and right. They quickly learn that the teacher, administrator or school employee are wrong when it comes to the student. The student then builds confidence in knowing that their parent will come to their rescue and fight till the death.

When a parent sits down and listens to the issues the teacher has, listens to the student, listens to the administrator, the parent becomes more informed. Parents then can make educated decisions on what is best. When parents make an educated decision, this is usually the best for the student, teacher and the class.

However, this is rare. If one hangs out at a school, they will usually see the parent fly off the handle when it comes to their child. They will not approach the situation with an open mind. Because of this, their child's attitude grows into what many call 'bullet proof'. They develop an attitude of 'you can't do that to me'.

This becomes very destructive for a community. Their actions are not limited to school, but to others, including police, paramedics, firemen, and their elders. This usually develops into a lack of respect for life. This lack of respect for life becomes a destructive force. This force is in the number of shootings within a community. This will appear in the amount of other violence a community will experience.

We are teaching children "its all about me". This contradicts what many experts believe. There is a prevailing thought that it takes a village to raise a child. But some parents are destroying that concept by teaching their children the importance of "ME".

My personal struggle is when you find what many call a quality teacher. But over the years, as this teacher reaches the golden years of teaching, being close to retirement, they often slack in the classroom. Their lectures become non existent. Students have a free rain in the classroom being able to do 'whatever' on their own because the teacher is getting burned out. This same teacher will demand performance from students based on their previous years of teaching. They don't recognize that their lectures, their teaching methods have slacked. This type of teacher will blame the students for non performance. They lack the ability to see that their teaching has dropped within the classroom.

It is the teachers contract that protects this teacher. People will stand and defend the teacher because of his or her reputation. But if one took time to speak to the students, observe the classroom, you might discover that the teacher will give an assignment and then sit at his or her desk and read a book. That they ignore what is going on in the classroom. And if the students are quiet, then there is no suspicion or reason for the teacher to get out of their own book.

It is the lack of evaluation of performance. If an administrator had the opportunity to evaluate this teacher in the classroom, then his or her book reading may stop and he or she may actually teach the students.

In private schools, teachers are evaluated constantly. Administrators, department head keep tabs in the classroom. The keep tabs on extra curricular activities. If the administrator or department head sees a problem, they address it immediately.

In public schools, you are rarely seeing administrators or department heads visiting the classroom. They are often too busy meeting the disciplinary needs of the school children. They are often too busy trying to organize a safe school event (football, basketball, dances etc).

When you distract the attention from what is important, you often create a problem. I feel that the legislatures within certain communities are failing to conduct proper evaluations. They are tossing water on a chemical fire. By doing this, they are adding to the fire therefore they are creating more harm.