Texas Proud
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- May 16, 2005
- Messages
- 17,383
I have been a volcano refugee in Frankfurt for the last 5 days. I have a flight and hopefully an airplane I will leave you the field with these comments.
1) Subjective evaluations such as you describe are not the TESTS people want to use. They are the process the TEST TEST TEST folks want to get rid of.
2) I've graded students for 35 years. It's not the same thing.
3) Everyone always asks why Harvard law graduates get the best jobs. The answer is that they take the best students and even three years of Harvard Law School can't ruin them. Harvard's expertise is in picking these winners. No one knows what the faculty contributes.
4) I stand on the bottom line. We have no demonstrated test that links long term student achievement to specific teachers.
I hope you do get out soon!!! Must be horrible to be stuck without anything to do...
I agree with Westerskies.... how can you measure 'me' as a student.. you give me a test of the subject matter and either I know it or I do not... you are not testing my ability to apply this to something else... I either know the answer or I do not..
But you CAN measure what level I was at prior to coming into your class... and measure what level I am after leaving... or couse, it all might not be your 'fault' or if I improved a lot your ability... but when we do it with 20 or 30 students we can get a feel if your class improved... and over a few years we can see if you are at the top of moving people up or at the bottom... just because you might not like the results because there are a lot of variable that you as a teacher can not control.... but we are not saying that if you get a 51 you stay, but a 50 you are fired... we are saying that we can rank teachers in such a way that we reward success and punish failure...
And I bet the professors at Harvard would have a different view of what knowledge they pass on to their students...