Mayor Bloomberg of New York City recently announced that student scores on standardized tests will factor into whether or not teachers receive tenure. These scores are already used in determining which teachers and principals receive bonuses and which schools are shut down for poor performance.
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As a student who took way too many standardized tests and someone who once wanted to be a high school teacher, I've always thought about what kind of impact teachers have on their students. Can you really judge how "good" a teacher is by looking at their students' standardized test scores?
I've been thinking about this a lot especially since a lot of my friends have recently been accepted into the Teach for America program which places recent college graduates as teachers in inner-city schools. In all honesty, I believe that teachers shouldn't be judged by the absolute scores but by improvement in scores. And as the scores get higher, there should be maintenance of scores and not necessarily improvement (it's kind of silly to me to penalize a teacher because her collective student's pass rate doesn't increase from a 99% to 100%). Also, teachers who are willing to teach in inner-city schools with kids from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds should also be rewarded because they have to work that much harder.
But again, are grades the best measure of what a teacher can do? In this world where everything needs to be measured quantitatively to appease politicians and the public, the answer seems to be yes. But for me, and this applies from elementary school to college, I remember the teachers who challenged me to think and stretch my mind. I don't even remember the grades I received in their classes, but they are the ones who I remember, and I hope that the education system will somehow challenge teachers to engage their students and to empower them with the skills and information necessary to be service-minded leaders in their communities.
