Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Later this month, The LA Times will post on its website a database with ratings for more than 6,000 elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, showing their effectiveness or ineffectiveness in the classroom as estimated by a "value-added" analysis of student test scores.
If you taught in Grades 3, 4 or 5 in L.A. Unified at some point during school years 2002-03 through 2008-09, and had at least 60 students total during that period, LA teachers may be in the database.
The teacher bashing has already started on talk radio here in Los Angeles, and this morning Fox News reported about this same article.
I am a teacher who has been teaching for 18 years, and I will say that my test scores have consistently been rising as my teaching practices have improved. Also, working with teachers by sharing techniques and ideas have helped me improve my test scores. How do you all feel about this rating system, and how accurate do you think it is?
Are your teaching methods improving, are are you being more successful in teaching to the tests?
If the test measures what is should, does it matter? If the test is a good measure of what a student should learn then I SHOULD be teaching to the test. But that's actually a misnomer because you can't teach to the actual test because what is on the test varies from year to year. What we teach to are the standards. The standards are used to write the test. Different standards are on the test from one year to the next, which makes it really hard to teach to the test. The best I can do is review the format the questions will be in and it's only fair that students see the format before they take the test.
Not when you consider the fact that some teachers have been caught giving their students the answers to the test.
Not just teachers, but also administrators... And considering how many have been caught, I wonder how many are doing the same thing and have just flown under the radar.
This is actually one small reason why rating systems such as this may not be accurate. As an example, there is supposition among many teachers at a colleague's school that a certain teacher cheated on the state reading test last year. The reasons they believe this are plentiful, but include 1) one student who did not bring his glasses on testing day and cannot read without them, yet only missed 1 question, 2) 5 students who failed (by a huge margin) multiple practice state tests (the practice tests are released state tests from previous years) as recently as 1 to 2 weeks prior to the test administration passed the test and only missed 1 to 3 questions, and 3) 4 students reading 2 years below grade level passed with either 0 or 1 questions incorrect. These students will be spread among 4 teachers this coming school year. If the students do not pass the test, this will reflect on the new teachers (as no growth or regression) on their evaluations and would reflect poorly on them should a similar analysis take place. If this was an isolated incident, I wouldn't even think anything of it, but I have friends who teach in other states who have encountered similar situations. I cannot imagine anyone giving a student answers on these tests, erasing and re-bubbling, or anything like it, but it seems there are some folks out there willing to do it.
Are your teaching methods improving, are are you being more successful in teaching to the tests?
Wow what a low blow.
I will tell you this, the strategies that I have learned over the years, as well as meeting with other teachers on my grade level who have had success with their students have made me a better teacher.
The way the text books are written, and with the standards that we have to cover, we are basically teaching what will be tested, and that is California Standards in Language Arts, Reading, Math, and Science, for elementary teachers. So if you are insinuating that I am teaching to the test, in a sense, I am, but teaching the test, I AM NOT!
In fact, my grade level team, does everything together now, which makes my job easier. We look at our common assessments that we have generated on our own, and let that data guide our instruction. Then, we have all agreed as a team what we think is ESSENTIAL for the students on our grade level to learn, not focusing as much on standards that our students learn in other grade levels. For example, my team and I teach 4th grade. We feel that it is essential that 4th graders learn how to edit sentences, write a 3 paragraph summary, combine sentences, and identify the main idea in passages.
We make those standards our main focus for teaching our students. In Math, we feel that it is essential that 4th graders know how evaluate an algebraic equation by substituting a number for a variable, balancing equations, as well as graphing them on a coordinate grid. We also feel that place value is an important skill since many of our 4th graders struggle with reading numbers up to the millions place. I CAN GO ON AND ON BUT I THINK YOU SHOULD BE GETTING MY POINT.
If I were to teach the test, I could lose my credential and my test scores would become invalid and not included in my district's/school's over all score. So to answer your question again, I DON'T TEACH THE TEST OR TO THE TEST, BUT I TEACH ESSENTIAL STANDARDS THAT ARE ON THE TEST. I am working smarter thanks to my schools new PLC or PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY MODEL that's working quite well at my school.
Collosal stupidity and a meaningless move on the part of the Times
Quote:
Originally Posted by antredd
Later this month, The LA Times will post on its website a database with ratings for more than 6,000 elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, showing their effectiveness or ineffectiveness in the classroom as estimated by a "value-added" analysis of student test scores.
If you taught in Grades 3, 4 or 5 in L.A. Unified at some point during school years 2002-03 through 2008-09, and had at least 60 students total during that period, LA teachers may be in the database.
The teacher bashing has already started on talk radio here in Los Angeles, and this morning Fox News reported about this same article.
I am a teacher who has been teaching for 18 years, and I will say that my test scores have consistently been rising as my teaching practices have improved. Also, working with teachers by sharing techniques and ideas have helped me improve my test scores. How do you all feel about this rating system, and how accurate do you think it is?
I have a great deal of respect for teachers. They are underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated. They frequently have the monumental task of trying to teach/discipline/raise kids whose parents have failed to do their job. Instead of focusing on embarrassing these fine individuals, they should post the names and addresses of the PARENTS.
Bad move by the LA Times.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Collosal stupidity and a meaningless move on the part of the Times
