Just some random thoughts on Education

So I read this line recently, “Student learning is the most meaningful measure of all instructional practices and must remain the litmus test, or gateway, to determining future teacher practice.” [ Dwayne Chism (Omaha Public Schools) via The Marshall Memo's write up of “Excavating the Artifacts of Student Learning” by Dwayne Chism in Educational Leadership, February 2018 (Vol. 75, #5),] It troubles me. It troubles me because it posits that the way we can assess teacher performance and success is by measuring something called “student learning” but that concept cannot be quantified, let alone measured, especially as a direct consequence of the particular teaching.

If our focus as teachers is not in imparting a set of concrete facts but giving students the skills to be lifelong learners then we can’t know if we have succeeded until we measure life long learning, many years down the line. At that point, it is also impossible to know if the end result is linked conclusively to any singular or specific teaching many years earlier.

All of our various methods (formative and summative assessments, standardized tests, exit portfolios…whatever) which supposedly measure learning simply don’t. They measure a whole lot of stuff but not “learning”. We have no baseline performance and cannot account for variables related to test taking skills or external pressures. We can’t include bad days, or antipathy towards a teacher or subject. We have a hard enough time differentiating between true understanding and positive performance and struggle trying to distinguish between the rewards for effort and native skill.

I don’t mean to throw my hands up in resignation, but we keep thinking that concepts such as learning and teaching can be charted and definitively measured so that we can improve them. I don’t have an answer but I know that if we start with false goals, we are never going to get anywhere.