VIVA Teacher and blogger, Mark Anderson, will be part of a live Internet chat at 5 pm Thursday, May 17, talking testing and education reform sponsored by The Nation.
Mark will join The Nation education reporter Dana Goldstein and a representative from the Educators for Excellence network to discuss the role of testing in education reform. Mark is a New York City public school special-education teacher and contributor to the blog Schools as Ecosystems. He was a member of the NY Writing Collaborative that produced the report, Opening Doors to Professional Communication and Collaboration.
The discussion is open to anyone. For details, or to post a question for the panel, click here.
I am still trying to figure out how a teacher tool (testing) became the accountability tool to evaluate teachers. I thought a test was a tool used by a teacher to evaluate student performance. If we want to have true accountability we should find a different method to evaluate. I believe school districts should report on the number of students moving on to college, military or careers after graduation. The idea of school is to build a productive society and I believe reporting successful students would be a much better and more cost effective way of holding schools accountable.
As a retired Electronic Engineer, I have a real Life experience on testing. In Industry we have products as teachers have students. We are rewarded for successful sale of products in fact our longevity depends upon product sales. I am very sympathetic with teachers who have not had relevant training to keep up with the knowledge of current technology. In Industry we learn from our competitors – we reverse design their successful products and then strive to beat them at their game. We have regular meetings attended by Vice Presidents, Group managers, Design Engineers Layout designers test engineers and technicians – every level of participants – everyone is an equal in the meeting.
The problem of Public Education is that it is a “closed shop” and if you dont’t belong, you don’t participate. I am still waiting for the State department of Education to acknowledge significant material they agreed to recieve but have not responded to my Email. It consistedd of 35 years of experience of Industry and ten years of teaching GED and Private school tutoring.
Larry Hobson, Crossing Guard at Norterra Canyon Elementary Deer Valey School District