I certainly agree that learning - which I will define as the acquisition, mastery, and retention of prescribed skills - needs to be measured, modeled, and used to improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of the process.
Learning is a complicated process governed by MANY factors beyond teacher performance. These would include the student's interest, aptitude, and maturity/self-control, the parents' interest and engagement, the administration's effectiveness at providing a safe environment conducive to learning. Clearly, these factors are interrelated. Any worthwhile study needs to collect sufficient data to reasonably represent these contributions to the outcome.
Let me cite a concrete example: My wife is a teacher in a small private school who teaches chemistry, physics, calculus, and statistics to students in grades 10-12. Some of these are actually college level classes taught under the umbrella of a local community college, following their rubric. She spends many hours refining her classes and labs to make them more effective and engaging. As she looks at her grade distributions, they are ALWAYS bimodal. She can tell you by mid semester where most students will end up. Many will not do homework or study for tests. She will put notes on homework asking for students to see her about a problem and they will not follow up. She uses the school's academic warning system to notify parents, often with no response. Indeed, any parent can see any grade at any time by logging into the schools web site. The sad truth is many parents and students just don't give a rip. This is why many teachers roll their eyes when the "good idea fairy" suggests "let's do another study to evaluate teacher performance."
It is high time we evaluate the performance of students, parents, teachers, and administrators in this process. I am tired of seeing educational expenditures go up and performance go down. We need to pay for performance at all levels.
Learning is a complicated process governed by MANY factors beyond teacher performance. These would include the student's interest, aptitude, and maturity/self-control, the parents' interest and engagement, the administration's effectiveness at providing a safe environment conducive to learning. Clearly, these factors are interrelated. Any worthwhile study needs to collect sufficient data to reasonably represent these contributions to the outcome.
Let me cite a concrete example: My wife is a teacher in a small private school who teaches chemistry, physics, calculus, and statistics to students in grades 10-12. Some of these are actually college level classes taught under the umbrella of a local community college, following their rubric. She spends many hours refining her classes and labs to make them more effective and engaging. As she looks at her grade distributions, they are ALWAYS bimodal. She can tell you by mid semester where most students will end up. Many will not do homework or study for tests. She will put notes on homework asking for students to see her about a problem and they will not follow up. She uses the school's academic warning system to notify parents, often with no response. Indeed, any parent can see any grade at any time by logging into the schools web site. The sad truth is many parents and students just don't give a rip. This is why many teachers roll their eyes when the "good idea fairy" suggests "let's do another study to evaluate teacher performance."
It is high time we evaluate the performance of students, parents, teachers, and administrators in this process. I am tired of seeing educational expenditures go up and performance go down. We need to pay for performance at all levels.