A Little Test For Educators

If you’re a doctor, we can check how many patients die. If you’re a plumber, we can look for leaks. If you’re an exotic dancer, we can count the number of stiffies.

But if you deliver education, it seems that we can’t actually measure whether or not your consumers are getting their money’s worth. I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times, but it always shows up again in a new form.

My latest favorite is the “student testing” that’s going on here in Washington state, among others. Most educational professionals are aghast at the idea of actually measuring skills. Here are the facts we know:

1. Many of our children cannot read. Many cannot do simple math. Many cannot write a simple declarative sentence.
2. Over 50% of minority children will not graduate from high school.
3. Parents with money move to districts that teach. Parents without money move to charter schools, Catholic schools, and home schools.
4. Teaching is really pretty simple. Define the objective (“Student can add single digit integers”) and then measure success.

But the angry backlash I hear is amazing! Where do those citizens get off, expecting that they can measure whether the students are actually learning? They just don’t understand education. We can’t be expected to really get them to be able to do that stuff!

(If you’re a plumber, and you can’t fix the leaks, you’re out. Same with dead people and limp willies.)

I’ll be the first one to admit that being a teacher is no fun. (That’s why my education degree does NOT have a teaching certification, and never will.) You’re pulled from all sides, given multiple directions, and then not respected as you’d like to be.

But you should be measured. If you can’t teach those kidlets to add, leave. Go be a plumber. And if the next teacher (and the next, and the next) aren’t any more successful, the penny will finally drop. We’ll re-set expectations, change the objective, or maybe even decide that we don’t need to focus on them learning diversity and self-actualization and basket weaving.

If you stay, and complain, you’re part of the problem. (And don’t tell me you care about the children. If you care, support testing and teaching — and excel at it.)

And if you see my plumber, tell him that my leak is fine but now the toilet is running.