How-to-Study Blog

There is an increasing federal trend to attempt to have school districts link teacher salaries and merit awards to student achievement on standardized tests. On the one hand, this appears reasonable. Like any professionals, teachers should be held accountable for their effectiveness. Student achievement seems to be a logical benchmark. On the other hand, the same student is often taught by more than one teacher. How can we parcel out the contributions to achievement in this case? Further, standardized achievement tests are far from perfect indicators of what students learn. They tend to be narrow in focus, and value rote recall rather than insight and deep learning. There is also the accompanying pressure on teachers to teach specifically to what standardized tests measure. This issue has been a major issue for a number of years now. What are your thoughts?