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In the Unintended Consequences Dept.:
Eleven Atlanta educators - teachers and administrators - were convicted of felony racketeering charges for rigging test scores for district students in order to meet federal and locally mandated standards. Twenty one more avoided trial by pleading guilty. They coached students on correct answers to the standardized tests, and went so far as to change incorrect answers after the tests had been turned in. They did all this to earn bonuses for effective teaching and avoid termination for being bad at their job.
I'm not a fan of federal standards for public education, a matter that seems to be far better handled at the local level. Parents should be the deciders, not politicians thousands of miles away in the cocoon knows as Washington D.C. But standards of any sort or source, when combined with incentives or disincentives, almost guarantee some will game the system. It's human nature. In this case, financial bonuses made the Atlanta outcome all but certain, and make it at least likely that the same thing is going on places with a similar system, though perhaps on a much smaller scale.
The teachers' union notwithstanding, educators should be held accountable for their job performance just like everyone else. Measuring outcomes is trickier in this case than it is for accountants or weather forecasters (ahem), but doable, especially over multiple years.
Note: I had years where I sure wouldn't want to be judged on the basis of my freshman section of BL101.
So how do we implement standards for teachers that include consequences for failure to measure up without inviting abuse of the system like occurred in Atlanta? Probably impossible, human nature being what it is. But tight local oversight seems a much better way to reduce the likelihood than federal administration. Among other things, parents can be closely involved with the process and raise alarms when things just don't seem right. Economies of scale bring savings in an enterprise as closely tied to funding as education, but the law of diminishing returns kicks in when the feds run education, and apparently even in a local district the size of Atlanta's.
Like so many other areas of contemporary life we've abdicated the responsibilities of parenting to "experts" and assume that because we pay them money they'll do a good job. Ask any good teacher and they'll tell you parental involvement in a child's education has consistently declined, and it's the single biggest element in the kid's success. Which is to say that the parents in Atlanta bear at least some responsibility in a situation that got way out of control. Surely they should have known their kid shouldn't have been passing those tests.
I worked on my Easter sermon this morning. It says something about my level of satisfaction with it that I saved it on my desktop as "Easter Sermon?"
I got my hair cut this morning by a new gal named Eileen, who is simply a nice person. Alas, this simply nice person felt compelled to make conversation. sigh.
I like cars. I'd like to drive a lot of different cars. Not the high end/high performance models, just the unique, quirky, or interesting ones. I'll never have the Jay Leno funds to own a stable of them, which means I'm either going to have to fake being a buyer at dealerships and from CraigsList or get creative.
So how 'bout we start a car co-op where people who own one or two drive-worthy vehicles share them? You sign up, pay just enough to cover associated costs (additional liability insurance?) and trade cars every two weeks or so. You'd pick off a list of available vehicles and wait your turn. Or maybe you get to drive it for one week and the owner gets it for the other three weeks of the month.
Wanna drive a '59 Chevy pickup? OK, I'll trade you a week of that experience for a week driving your Mini Cooper S, or MG TD, or '61 Lincoln Continental, or Citroen CV, or....
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