The title can be completed by the statement, "determining what is success"!. Currently the politicians and experts say that comes from a test students take and how well they do as a group and subgroups. It's so ridiculously simplified into if 90=% pass the test, the teacher is doing a decent job, unless a particular subgroup makes up the majority of that 10% that didn't pass. It's just not that simple to define whether or not learning and success has taken place with students over a years time. There are many factors that determine success that are completely out of a teacher or a schools control. Such as druge use. NFL players want us to believe it's healthy for them to smoke. That maybe true for a pro football player but a student smoking weed the day of a test will not benefit from the medicinal qualities of THC. Other factors are teen pregnancy, difficult enough for an adult women to manage through pregnancy. Teen jobs, yes, its common for a teen to work until 10 pm or even as late as 12 am at night. Once again, not a conducive environment for a students learning when he/she works after school from 4 pm until 10 pm at the local burger shop. Family life for teens can be very stressful today. I come in contact with many teens who will live in several different homes throughout the year due to the fact they aren't living with their parents or get kicked out of the house of a parent. Which, this leads us to the most important factor we all know but yet the politicians and experts will not factor it in, parental involvement and parent's being held accountable.
There are many factors that affect students academic life. It would be difficult to take in all those factors but the one thought that has begun to develop within the education community that I believe is closing in on the right track and that is throwing away the testing and comparing of groups and subgroups and start looking at the "growth" of the individual student. This is how it's done in sports. Each player is looked at based on his growth. The player and coach are held accountable for the growth of each player. I believe the quicker we move academics toward this type of determining success, we will begin to get on the right track in determining the success of teachers and administrators and fairly holding them accountable for ther job they do. .
http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Policies/Measuring-student-growth-At-a-glance/Measuring-student-growth-A-guide-to-informed-decision-making.html
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