A Really Bad Idea in a Really Dumb State

So what's wrong with this picture?
Fla. to Link Teacher Pay To Students' Test Scores
Linking teacher pay to test scores has it all wrong. What it does in the end is link compensation to the performance of others not to the performance of the teacher. This makes no real sense you argue. If a teacher is doing her job then students will learn. This argument creates a causal relationship between teaching and learning. If one teaches then students WILL learn. The problem is that the relationship between teaching and learning is not cause and effect, quite the contrary. Learning takes place only if the student does what students must do, what Gary Fenstermacher calls studenting. Teachers are responsible not for student learning but for creating learning environments that are especially engaging and, therefore, conducive to learning, to students actually engaged in studenting.

The role of the teacher is clear. Teachers must plan and execute their plans in the classroom, they must be knowledgeable about the content they teach, and they must be knowledgeable about the students they teach. Planning is critical to the work of teaching. Excellent teaching looks seamless because it is well planned. Planning leads to quality execution in the classroom. But planning goes beyond simply preparing lessons. Planning requires that the classroom be arranged in such a way as to foster learning. Examples of content literacy must surround students; the availability of books and resources for inquiry must be evident and easily accessed by learners. Knowledge of content is critical. Teachers must be lifelong learners. They must choose to engage in scholarly inquiry examining reflectively their teaching and the stuff they teach. Finally, teachers must be aware of the cultural and social makeup of the students they are teaching. Without this knowledge teachers are merely engaged in a continuation of hegemonic colonization of the other. These are, among other things, the responsibilities of teachers and represent what teachers can and should be evaluated upon.

To evaluate teachers on what their students do gets it all wrong. Students should and must be evaluated on what they do in the classroom, on what they can demonstrate as learning. Reliance on a single instrument (in this case the FCAT) is only one possible measure of a child's performance. Many argue that reliance on a single instrument is unethical and immoral. A child is measured by many things; the ability to bubble in answers to multiple-guess questions is just one among many that should be considered. The FCAT and other tests like it fall into what Alfie Kohn calls The Bunch-o-Facts Model of education. Sounds more like schooling to me.

Enough of scapegoating teachers. If teachers are to be measured on the performance of others whose actions teachers have no direct control then the politicians that think up these crazy rules should also be measured on the performance of others. Perhaps we should tie legislators' salaries to the poverty rate in their state, or to the crime rate, or to the performance of students in schools that they are responsible for funding--now there is a novel idea!