Politics+Education=Failed Premaces

I promised myself that I would not get into politics with this blog.  However, I'm fed up with non-educators telling me how to become a better educator!  Politicians have put their "Minds" together and have decided that how students perform determines a teacher's success.  While I do find this partly true, I do not believe that this is an absolute.  While a teacher's ability to teach does have an affect on how students learn, if a student is not willing to learn, the teacher's ability means nothing.

So Nevada, like many other states (Idaho included) are basing the evaluations of teachers on the performance of the students' scores on their standardized testing.  Of course, the only subject covered in standardized testing here are Math and Language Arts.  It's interesting how we are judging every teacher, no matter what subject, on these two criteria. 

It is true that many subjects are intertwined and one can help the other.  However, if I remember correctly, I was never taught algebra in Art, nor do I teach it in music.  I do cover the basics, however, like counting to four and simple fraction arithmetic.

I do not find it very effective to base teacher pay on the result of student learning, based on the fact that every student learns differently.  Besides that, there are some students who just do not care! I struggled with math throughout Middle School and High School, even though I was coming in early and spending hours on it at home.  If my teachers' evaluation was judged in part of how my scores were, they would not have had me in class.  Perhaps they might have even given me the answers to the test so their evaluation would not have been lowered. 

Complaining is not what we need to do, but to bring the facts to the table.  We need to let our politicians know how wrong they are in implementing these laws.  Most have not been educators or have had any classroom experience.  If we want to let the education system bloom and improve, we need to let qualified teachers make the decisions and direct the work.

Evaluations should be done by a qualified teacher who understands and has studied the subject being taught.  That may mean we need to bring evaluators from other districts or schools to do the evaluation.  This will also hopefully get rid of any biases and give a true evaluation of how a teacher is.