undefined | Better HN

0 pointsanamax14y ago0 comments

> He should've written "demand statistics", that would make his point more clear.

That's a different point. Since there is no shortage of folks complaining about demand results, it's reasonable to assume that he meant what he wrote.

Besides, why is demand statistics wrong? Why don't you think that we should know how well (or not) things are going?

> Also, when did we get "crap results" with "trust the teachers"?

Trust the teachers is what we did before the current testing mania.

> Was there some point in the past where we were using standardized tests

Huh?

> abandoned it in favor of 'trust the teachers' and watched them turn out a bunch of lazy hippies?

Trust the teachers seemed to work for quite a while. Then we noticed that it wasn't working.

Are you claiming that US education worked better right before the testing mania?

0 comments

jbooth14y ago

I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".

Some amount of quantitative results measuring makes sense in any situation. But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of. Kloc, issue tickets, or standardized test scores. I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.

anamaxOP14y ago

> I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".

Why can't we say that? We did have a big downturn in education quality. If we don't know whether teachers are doing their job right, why should we pay them?

> But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of.

Absolutely.

Why the assumption that the majority of education is untestable?

> I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.

Which reminds me - why the assumption that teachers are professionals? Yes, they're paid, but traditional professionals are liable.

What have teachers done to earn leeway?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse