Mr. Fuson’s Page of English Enlightenment

I just read an article about beginning to assess teachers by student performance. This country and its politicians never cease to amaze me. When standardized testing first started, teachers were assured that these assessments would not be used to measure performance. After all, that would be ridiculous, right? Assessing one person based off of how another person performs? Let’s see how this works in the real world, since every time teachers complain about this we get the handy statement that we simpyl don’t work and “those who can’t teach” (good one, by the way–Very original, if teachers helped you imagine that one, we deserve to lambasted).

In the context of the medical field:

“Dr. Stevens, thanks for coming to see me today.”

“It’s no problem Administrator Johnson, anything I can do to clear up this situation I am willing to do.”

“Well, that’s just it Dr. Stevens. You’re fired. Furthermore, your license is being revoked.”

(Standing Aghast) “Why?!? What have I done?”

“Well, it’s very simple. Over the last three years you have lost over 100 patients. We can’t have you failing at that kind of rate. It simply is not good for our hospital’s image.”

“But, many of those patients were old and died of natural causes. And some were terminal before I ever saw them. The disease had progressed too far.”

“I appreciate your disappointment, but the facts are the facts. Take the Robinson case from yesterday….”

“I have been telling Mr. Robinson for five years that he needed to stop smoking and start eating better or he risked cardio-pulminary failure. In fact, I wrote him a prescription for medication for his blood pressure last year and he refused to take it. You can’t hold me accountable for the patient’s lack of action on his own behalf!”

“Of course we can. If you were a good doctor you would have explained things in such a way as to make sure your patient heeded your advice and did everything necessary to extend his life. You know, in every patient there is a healthy person who just wants to be set free.”

“What do I do now? Where do I go? Being a physician was my life!”

“Don’t lose hope, Stevens. You could still teach. You know what they say….”

OK, so this is a little over-the-top, but my point remains the same. America, in all her substantial glory, is at serious risk. Just as I stated that we were holding kids back by our actions concerning technology, we are also holding them back by stating that a teacher is responsible for their learning. I have had both skillful and not-so-skillful teachers in the past. Ultimately, I could still learn though because it was my desire to do so. Only in America do we point at parents, teachers, and society for the failure of students.

We fail students in that we imbed the idea that they do not “own” their failures. Someone else does. Compared to other nations who have “passed” us in the education of their population, this becomes even more clear. In Japan, students who do not pass the national test given at certain grade levels are not permitted to move forward and are instead re-directed to trade schools. Sound sharsh, but keep in mind that these trade schools are more difficult than the average high school classroom because the students are simply expected to learn.

Why is this important? Well, our current economic situation is a direct reflection of this “It’s everybody else’s fault” mentality. For 20 years people have been warning of an impending credit crisis as we rapidly approached the point where the cumulative debt of the people of this nation nearly matches the gross income. Of course, our government has not been a good model, racking up trillion of dollars of debt themselves (which is also ours, so we’re pretty much screwed), and yet very few people have curbed their spending. In fact, we have increased the rate at which we use credit. America as a whole is repsonsible for this problem, not just the politicians, investors and bankers. Seriously, it never occured to anyone that 0% down on a house could be just a little shaky?

Again, I digress (why not, it’s one of my favorite things), but my point is this; Personal responsibility has got to become a priority in this country once again! Blaming teachers for the failure of students doesn’t make sense. We can evaluate teachers on a number of criteria, and I think it’s important we begin to define those criteria and revamp them to the needs of today’s students soon, but we simply cannot look at students performance, particularly on a standardized test, to assess teachers. It just doesn’t work.

No, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go fire my dietitian as I have gained five pounds the past week….

after I eat these two foot-long chili-cheese hot dogs and loaded french fries.