Teacher Quality and Testing Don’t Mix

[Modern School]

Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and others have been spewing the ridiculous lie that teacher experience and education do not matter very much, as indicated by the fact that student test scores are often low, even when their teachers are experienced.

It’s the Class, Stoopid
This should come as no surprise since standardized tests measure students’ material security and social privilege, not the quality of their teachers. Any teacher at a low income school, whether young, old, experienced, or novice, will have lower test scores than those teaching at middle class schools. (The data below offers just one example of the correlation between standardized test scores and poverty). For some explanations of how poverty influences student achievement, please see 8 Delusions About Education, The Dropout Process in Life Course Perspective, Inequality at the Starting Gate, Meaningful Differences in the Every Day Experience of Young American Children and any number of articles by Richard Rothstein.

To read the rest, please go to http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2010/12/teacher-quality-and-testing-dont-mix.html