Why Schools Used To Be Better

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/04-1



You enter a checkout lane at Walmart, Target, or other big-box store and put your purchases on the counter. They’re scanned by a device that reads bar codes and translates them into data fed at the speed of light through fiber optics cables to corporate headquarters and distribution centers.

The data produced by the bar code readers keep track of inventory, determine appropriate staffing levels, provide feedback about advertising effectiveness, and much else that guides decision making.

Those in Washington now shaping education policy are certain that what data tracking does for business it can do for education.

But there’s a problem. Kids don’t come with bar codes, and teachers don’t have scanners. Nancy Creech, the Michigan kindergarten teacher who recently told her story here on The Answer Sheet, summarized a consequence of data-collecting mandates. Authorities in her state, unwilling to trust her professional judgment, require her to give more than 27,000 grades or marks to her 4- and 5-year-olds. That number, evenly distributed over the school year, would require her to take a data-related action every two minutes of every school day!

[Igel]

1. That 27000 number seems off.

At 185 days and assuming 25 pupils (illegally large by Texas standards), that's 5.8 grades per pupil per day.

I have 150 students, give (on average) 3.5 grades a week. I give upward of 19000, and couldn't if I needed to grade each one for both accuracy and completeness, entirely by hand.