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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]11:20 here.  I regularly see teachers who have been crying after data meetings with an admin.  Why can't little Larla read?  She is absent twice a week, she was below grade level when she entered KG and it's December.  Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/the-disproportionate-stress-plaguing-american-teachers/503219/?utm_source=atlfb[/quote]

Truth. One of the most eye opening conversations we had this year was when we paired upper elementary teachers with pre-k/k/1st grade teachers to talk about what our students come in with when they start school. 4th and 5th grade teachers had no idea that kids come to school without knowing their colors, shapes or numbers/letters. Or the fact that some kids take up to half a school year to learn how to behave in a classroom and become accustomed to routines. The academic concepts don't sink in while they're learning how to function in school, so that puts them even farther behind.

There's a covert and sometimes overt sense of blame when students arrive at the next grade level. Teachers ask what the previous grade level was doing. It goes all the way up to high school. A high school teacher I know recently jokingly said that we must not be working hard in elementary school because of all the gaps her students have once they arrive to high school. Ha ha ha.  :evil:  She had no clue where they had started from and how much progress they had made. But like I've said a million times before--progress doesn't count. Only proficiency matters. [/quote]

Why can't progress be measured instead of proficiency? Or at least both be measured? Wouldn't that be better than just measuring proficiency? Would children really need more testing just to get this data or could the current data be used to show progress?[/quote]

Evaluating based on progress would be an improvement although it does not account for all the risk factors and variables for our most vulnerable kids.  Unfortunately the curriculum standards and systems are not set up that way so the current standardized tests, like the SOLs in Virginia, don't measure and cannot measure year-to-year progress.

Additionally, the results are being applied regardless of whether a course is a 'content' or 'skill' -set.  It is possible for a student with little prior knowledge to pass a contemporaneous content-based standardized test if the child's reading skills meet the baseline for that particular test.  It is almost impossible for a student who is 1,2,3 or more years behind grade level to 'catch up' those skills enough to pass the current year language arts or math standardized test without a significant allocation of resources much beyond what any school system in the area or country is consistently and comprehensively providing.

Essentially, the system is broken.  That isn't to say that standardized testing is wrong - it actually is a benefit to schools with large populations of low SES and high poverty kids because it holds the school systems' and administrators' feet to the fire in terms of visibility and funding - but it is to say that the results of standardized testing are being used incorrectly.

In many ways, it would be much better to use the results of the standardized tests to evaluate administrators and central office staff rather than teachers.  Central office staff and administrators are the decision makers who have developed such rigid protocols for teachers.  And they are the ones who are in charge of the allocation of resources like paras and textbooks, and they make determinations of class sizes, etc.  Teachers are at the bottom of this decision chain.  They are the most visible to parents but teachers have the least control of anyone in the school system these days.

So, in answer to OP's question, there is a teacher shortage because teachers are getting the short end of the stick.  [/quote]

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