Here's an article thoughtfully critical of the new initiative to use student test scores to rate teachers' performance over time. In light of the conversations we've been having, I am struck particularly by the author's reference to the initiative's commodification of learning -- treating knowledge as "things" that students acquire from teachers. His suggestions about the political and economic subtexts are also intriguing, if true. Proponents of value-added assessment speak of identifying effective teaching techniques so as to disseminate them, but what if technique is only a small piece of what a teacher does -- what if the experience of learning has crucially to do with a relationship with the teacher? It's difficult to see how you would clone that...
http://www.truth-out.org/value-added-assessment-tool-improvement-or-educational-nuclear-option63244
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In a class I took about a year ago, we extensively discussed the role of commercialism in the public schools. I hadn't considered teacher assessment as commercially driven, but that does make sense.
It may well be so; here the point is slightly subtler, that the concept driving the "value-added assessment" initiative comes from a misplaced commercial metaphor.
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