(Like many of my posts here, this is taken from forums. This one comes from a LinkedIn forum called The Economy, under the thread 'There must be a fairly simple some way to regulate a fundamentally capitalist economy .." in response to Brian Miller, who started the thread.)
@Brian
I agree with everything in your post with the exception of these two sentences.
>> I propose teachers be compensated based on a track record of consistent excellence. The yardstick for excellence would be state-wide or nation-wide standardized test performance, adjusted for variations ini the overall performance in a given school district.<<
As one of those who excels at testing, I'm almost speaking against my peers here - and, I imagine most of the participants in this forum.
There is no doubt there is a place for testing. There is a core of knowledge necessary to continue education and to function in modern society. I would argue that this core knowledge should be taught and tested from a vocational perspective, where the teacher is required to assure the students learn the material. Largely, you're describing this vocational perspective.
Generalized testing is just that: generalized. The term describes about 40% of the population. Bringing only 40% of the population to a level of testable competence can not be considered a successful strategy.
Language skills required by all testing become problematic. The testing includes language skills, yet language skills are required to do the tests. That reasoning is circular and false prima facia.
There are four key terms I use: vocational, academic, pedagogy, and androgogy. These terms define different responsibilities for learning and age groups.
Vocational training requires the teacher to successfully transfer the material to the students.
Academic learning is really the goal of our school systems. In academic learning, it's the responsibility of the student to learn the material. The teacher provides structure and guidance.
Pedagogy is the most common philosophy of teaching. These methods reflect the goals of vocational and academic learning as a student progresses to increasingly difficult material. Still, pedagogy is largely one directional, from teacher to student, and limits the requirement to learn for the student.
These philosophies of learning become an pervasive ideology. As an ideology, it functions like any other ideology assuming its own correctness and to be complete.
In essence, we teach people that to learn, they must take a class. The class is assumed to contain what the person needs to learn.
It's a top-down system that is reflected in many aspects of our society.
Androgogy is also called adult learning.
In this philosophy, teachers teach how to learn and critical thinking. The responsibility is on the student to learn, and contribute to the overall knowledge. Yes, that means adding to the material covered in a class - at nearly every level, even before age 12.
Unfortunately, these concepts are increasingly lost in our school systems - because of the ideology of pedagogy
Androgogy is accidental.
Students are not encouraged to contribute to the class until college, or even graduate levels. That's patently ridiculous, but it is the system in place.
The philosophy of pedagogy is not based on the realities of human development. Pedagogy is a philosophy to control human development.
From about the age of 12, a child decides what they will learn and what they will not. These decisions may be influenced by peers, parents, but most often by teachers. Far too rarely are these decisions made based on the child's abilities, talents, or interests.
As your second sentence (above) reflects "adjusted for variations ini the overall performance in a given school district."
We cannot adjust core skills for any region or nationality if we expect people to achieve the level to function in our complex society. The United States requires a level of citizenship that precludes this sort of adjustment. You're talking about producing a class of barely functional citizens.
Even more, adjustments in core testing will erode our competitiveness in the broader world.
The ideology of adjustments is in place today.
(Note: I ran out of space. LinkedIn limits posts to 4000 characters.)
Here are a couple of links that I'll be commenting on later.
From Andragogy to Heutagogy RMIT Melbourne
Andragogy unfinished wikipedia article
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