20-fold increase in standardized testing coming with Gates Foundation's "Common Core":

[HiPointDem]

37. Excuse me, but first give me the research showing that tests of student achievement measure

teacher effectiveness.











"R-Squared is a statistical term saying how good one term is at predicting another. If R-Squared is 1.0 then given the value of one term, you can perfectly predict the value of another term."

"For the math geeks out there, the R2 for each test average/income range chart is about 0.95. On every test section, moving up an income category was associated with an average score boost of over 12 points."

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-income/


"Teacher effectiveness" as measured by students' test scores is a circular measure.

There is little to no evidence that changing out teachers improves student performance generally, but lots of evidence that teachers who move from low-income districts to high-income ones suddenly and miraculously become more "effective".

The rhetoric about "paying teachers like other professionals" in exchange for busting union protections is a trojan horse. It's not going to happen, because in a capitalist system there is no profit in paying big bucks to educate the masses.

And the comment about how we can't change the economic situation but we can change teachers is like the old story about people losing a key in a dark spot but looking for it under a light because "the light's better here."

The "poorer quality" of teachers isn't the reason that students' test scores mirror social and economic hierarchies. Not in any way, shape, or form.