Measuring

@SaskTeachersFed why is there still so much emphasis on “measuring”? Isn’t there more to teaching and learning than this?

— Cynthia Schultz (@CynthiaSchultz1) November 1, 2015

Why indeed is there still so much emphasis on measuring – moving from “what we can measure” to what “we care about”? What is it that teachers care about and wish to measure that they are already not measuring? Measuring and moving towards standardization is the problem. What do standardized assessments really tell you? – that students can regurgitate what we teach them? That if we teach to the test, then hopefully students can past the test? There is no feedback for the student other than a grade. There is not much feedback for the teacher or the school either.

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I remember school goals being: “By the end of the school year, ___% of students will be reading at or above grade level.” The same holds true for math as well. What do these school goals really tell the school – do they reflect the students? Do they reflect the teachers and how well the teach? Do they reflect the way in which students are taught? I hope that there would be more important goals for a school to measure over the course of a school year than reading and math scores/levels.

As Kumashiro (2015) tells us,

[I]t is not possible to say exactly what the students were learning. And therein lies the uncertainty of teaching.