Article: EUOLogy about RPG Campaigns as Books

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Each class is usually held to the same general standard

To clarify, I mean the students within one class are usually held to the same general standard as each other, but even at the same college in the same department, there are often disparities in the standards that each class is held to. The tests are different, and often not just in format, but in the difficulty of the material. This is not standardized testing.

Which brings me back to my solution for creating minimum qualifications for teachers. The accreditation board for colleges accredits according to the material that is being taught. It is the instittution's procedures and demands that are accredited, not the performance of the students. Let's examine what are teachers are putting into the system.

[Skar]

However, while I don't know the solution, I go back to my program evaluation. Have the plans and material reviewed before the teacher goes into the school year. Have the TEACHER take tests. While I don't agree that a student will have legitimate problems with any form of standardized tests, any teacher who has those same problems isn't qualified to teach.

Which brings me back to my solution for creating minimum qualifications for teachers. The accreditation board for colleges accredits according to the material that is being taught. It is the instittution's procedures and demands that are accredited, not the performance of the students. Let's examine what are teachers are putting into the system.

This proposed solution will not work for the very same reasons you say standardized testing of students will not work.  If testing students to a standard is not a good measure of what they know and are capable of how is it a good measure of your teachers?

The desired results of a public school system are students who can read, write and think.  How do you determine whether the techniques being used to accomplish that goal are effective if you refuse to measure against a standard?  It has to be a feedback loop and without input from the back end you can't have a loop.

The minimum standards you mentioned that unify same subject classes within departments and across universities are exactly what I'm talking about.  A minimum standard.  Today we have almost 10 percent of high-school senior who read no better than 2nd or 3rd grade level if at all.  Yet they're graduating with diplomas.

I don't know either, however, I feel the case is strong enough against more standardized testing, however the test is structured, that we can determine it is not the answer, and to look somewhere else. Just because we don't know the right way to act does NOT mean that we should act wrongly.

What would be wrong, in your opinion, with asking high-school seniors to demonstrate that they can read and comprehend, say... Of Mice and Men (the actual book is not important just the level of complexity. heck, give teachers a list of 5 books a month before the test and let them or the students choose) before you give them a diploma.    This is testing to a standard.

All I'm saying is that there has to be some measure at the back end of what the teachers are accomplishing.  Are you really saying we should screen our teachers carefully at the front end and then completely ignore the back end?

We both agree that the system is broken.  You seem to think (correct me if I'm wrong) that applying standards to the teachers would so surely force the results we want at the backend that there is no need to check and see.  

I think that measuring the results would force the changes at the front end required to obtain the desired results.

I'm curious if you see a difference between "standardized testing" and "testing to a standard" and what that difference is.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

1) my solution will work better because while you can't separate testing subjects (like handwriting and say, literary analysis), because it isn't fair to student who excel in one of those areas but are very poor in the other, those limitations do not exist for good teachers. Someone who can't pass both of those should surely be able to progress if he excells at one but not the other, however, we surely can't let that person be in charge of training others. That's an important difference.

2) If we take standard to mean "Serving as or conforming to a standard of measurement or value." ie, if it means the same across the board, then I see no difference in those terms. And my problem  with it is primarily that a uniform test across the board is going to point out weaknesses that don't really exist. I take it that you mean the same thing, since you have used them interchangeably before. Or else you have changed opinions and terminology since then and not made it clear that you are arguing something different.

All I see coming out of standardized testing is pointing out that there is a problem SOMEWHERE. It will have problems pin pointing what that problem is, and it will not even really tell us if the problem is with the students or the teacher. Not with any precision anyway. In some cases, like where 50% of the students from one teacher are failing in repeated years, then I would assume it's the teacher, but if it only happens once, I have a great deal of "reasonable doubt" as to whether she just was assigned a lot of poor students or if she just did a bad job of teaching that year. It's not conclusive until after the teacher has had many years to do his/her damage

3) but my biggest contention with your proposal is that you call it "standardized" when in fact, it is NOT standardized. When the grading is not standard (which would be the case with a very widely distributed grading system), the test is then not standard.

[Skar]

Ok.  

I take it that you mean the same thing, since you have used them interchangeably before. Or else you have changed opinions and terminology since then and not made it clear that you are arguing something different.

I don't think they mean the same thing.  And I only used them interchangeably until it became clear you had a very different interpretation of the phrase "standardized testing" than I did.   And I've said that 4 or 5 times in the last several emails posts.

What I mean by testing to a standard is very simple.  You don't pass students who can't bloody read, write, and do arithmetic to the appopriate level.  And if a teacher can't get a reasonable number of students to that level each year then the teacher suffers consequences along with the students.

Making sure that teachers have at least a certain level of competence or training is, of course, part of the solution.  It just can't be the only part.

It doesn't matter how many classes a teacher has taken on teaching and their subject.  If they can't teach they shouldn't be in a position to inflict themselves on students.  The only way to determine if a teacher can do their job (and this applies to all jobs not just teachers) is to look at results.  What are the results we want?  Kids who can Read, Write and do Arithmetic.  So how do we find out if kids can do that?  We test them.  At least some of that testing has to come from a source other than the teacher himself otherwise bad teachers pass enough kids to keep their job and stay in the system forever.


If you make a worker's employment and compensation completely separate from the results of his work you get crappy work.  The same holds true for teachers.

How can you get around that?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't think you assign a quota for how many kids pass. That involves a lot of factors other than the teacher's ability -- the only way to measure that ability is to test THEM. Look at how they prepare, observe them in class. The rest is the students.

And I've never had a problem understanding that you didn't always mean bubble test, I think this is an impression you are putting on me because you can't understand any other way I would ever disagree with you if I was using the same terms: this is not the case, I understnad you, I just think you're wrong.

IF they're so different, then I cannot understand why you can fault teachers unions for resisting more standardized testing. Because the current tests don't do what you say, and they are even less helpful than what you're saying. I'd darn well resist them too. They are a burden and not accomplishing even what they are intended to accomplish. They're only in the way and it seems that the unions are doing the right thing if they're resisting tooth and claw to have more of it.

[Skar]

Rereading your post SE I also see that we are on different pages when it comes to the scope of the testing we're talking about.

At a primary and seconday school level I have absolutely no interest in whether or not a student can analyze literature.  All I want to know is whether or not he can read and communicate clearly using the written word.  And if he can do math problems correctly.  And if he has a grasp of basic problem solving.  If he can do those things he has the ability to teach himself whatever he wants to know, be it history or computer programming.

It seems to me that you could easily define a standard in each of those areas and fairly test students to that standard.  To avoid all the complications that come with the SAT style questions and grading methods you'd have to include humans in the mix who would be flexible enough to interpret the answers given intelligently and that would take some kind of distributed system.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

What if that kid can NEVER learn to write well? What if it is always sloppy? Is he stuck in elementary school forever? That's absurd. There's no reason to hold him there if he's capable of critical thinking but he just can't write.

And no, I didn't misunderstand that either. I just disagree with your stance.

If you ask two men to build a house, and you give one a pile of well constructed bricks and the other a pile of mud, one is going to build you a house that passes a minimum standard of living. The one with the pile of mud will not, even if he is the best construction worker on the planet.

Another example: The Las Vegas and Salt Lake missions consistently baptize more converts than any other part of the country. Particularly the northeast and the deep south. Is this because there are only good missionaries in Las Vegas and Salt Lake? Does it make the missionary who baptizes 50 people in Brazil a better missionary than the one who baptized 2 in Norway? Of course not. It is not a reflection of their righteousness or their ability to work. It is a matter of what they have to work with.

If you get a kid, or more likely, a group of kids that refuse to do homework, no matter how skilled you are at teaching, they will not get the skills they need. You want to punish teachers for those children's obstinance. The teacher has prepared well, has done all reasonably possible to catch their attention and to motivate them, yet they refuse. Kids don't pass, teacher loses his job, because the criteria for his job depends entirely on the performance that ultimately, he does NOT control.

Yes, you can influence people, but you CANNOT make them perform. You also canont make them do anything they are incapable of, no matter how much both you and the person in question WANT to do it. How can we rationally judge a teacher's performance by the light of so many factors that they cannot control?

[Skar]

I don't think you assign a quota for how many kids pass.I never said anything about quotas. That involves a lot of factors other than the teacher's ability -- the only way to measure that ability is to test THEM. Look at how they prepare, observe them in class. The rest is the students.So you ARE in favor of insulating the teachers from the results of their work?

And I've never had a problem understanding that you didn't always mean bubble test, I think this is an impression you are putting on me because you can't understand any other way I would ever disagree with you if I was using the same terms: this is not the case, I understnad you, I just think you're wrong.I know you think I'm wrong.  I must say that if you honestly think that teachers (or any group for that matter) will hold themselves to a high standard while being totally unaccountable for the results of their work it doesn't bug me at all that you think I'm wrong.  You do realize of course that under your system ADD kids would have just ended up in the dust bin right?  If teachers are the only ones tested and a teacher is doing a good job according to the defined standard and kids are never tested, they just move on through the system learning nothing and are vomited forth on society totally unprepared.  Now if the teacher was tested and found good AND the kid was tested and found wanting, that kind of disconnect would raise a warning flag.  What's wrong with this kid?  How can we help him?

IF they're so different, then I cannot understand why you can fault teachers unions for resisting more standardized testing. Because the current tests don't do what you say, and they are even less helpful than what you're saying. I'd darn well resist them too. They are a burden and not accomplishing even what they are intended to accomplish. They're only in the way and it seems that the unions are doing the right thing if they're resisting tooth and claw to have more of it.  They are, as far as I can see, resisting tooth and claw having any of it.  I've never heard a teacher propose any kind of alternative, they just don't want to be accountable.

You're right.  Teachers need to be held to a higher standard and thus need to be compensated more to attract people that can achieve that higher standard.  But without measuring the results of the teacher's work, kids learning, you'll never be able to detect or fix problems.

And if you start upping teacher's salaries without measuring results (the only way to cut out the bias and possible incompetence of teacher evaluators is to look at results) you'll just be paying the crappy teachers more money.

[Skar]

What if that kid can NEVER learn to write well? What if it is always sloppy? Is he stuck in elementary school forever? That's absurd. There's no reason to hold him there if he's capable of critical thinking but he just can't write.

And no, I didn't misunderstand that either. Well, apparently you did, I never held up handwriting as a standard.  
And this is a straw man.  Any kid who's capable of critical thinking is capable of clear handwriting.  He may have to concentrate on it more than other kids but he's certainly capable of it. I just disagree with your stance.

If you ask two men to build a house, and you give one a pile of well constructed bricks and the other a pile of mud, one is going to build you a house that passes a minimum standard of living. The one with the pile of mud will not, even if he is the best construction worker on the planet.

The most skilled construction worker will make a much better house out of the mud than an unskilled construction worker.  It's easy to tell a badly made mud house from a well made mud house.  ergo: All those factors that make kids like a mud house in your example could be taken into account when judging the teacher by an intelligently designed and flexible system. But just because the kids are a pile of mud doesn't mean they should be advanced anyway.

Another example: The Las Vegas and Salt Lake missions consistently baptize more converts than any other part of the country. Particularly the northeast and the deep south. Is this because there are only good missionaries in Las Vegas and Salt Lake? Does it make the missionary who baptizes 50 people in Brazil a better missionary than the one who baptized 2 in Norway? Of course not. It is not a reflection of their righteousness or their ability to work. It is a matter of what they have to work with.

And how about the missionaries in Salt Lake and Nevada who never baptize anyone, is it what they have to work with too?  How about the missionaries in Norway who get 1 discussion when the average is 100?  Is it who they were given to work with too? Of course not.  The only way to tell if it's the missionary or the investigator is to examine them both.  Translated to education: you have to measure both the kids and the teachers against a standard of some sort.  

If you get a kid, or more likely, a group of kids that refuse to do homework, no matter how skilled you are at teaching, they will not get the skills they need. You want to punish teachers for those children's obstinance. The teacher has prepared well, has done all reasonably possible to catch their attention and to motivate them, yet they refuse. Kids don't pass, teacher loses his job, because the criteria for his job depends entirely on the performance that ultimately, he does NOT control. Here you've got a point I agree with.  A reasonable system would also have to be able to tell if the teacher was doing a good job but had been handed a crop of "bad" kids.  Two factors must be kept in mind to address this.  Compare the student's test results to other classes and schools in the area.  And see if it happens consistently.  Problem solved.

Yes, you can influence people, but you CANNOT make them perform. You also canont make them do anything they are incapable of, no matter how much both you and the person in question WANT to do it. How can we rationally judge a teacher's performance by the light of so many factors that they cannot control?See above.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

sigh, actually NO. not at all. ADD kids would not be left behind because they are diagnosed outside, and then put into programs where they have teachers that are trained for it.

Yes, you did talk about quotas, you said "certain numbers" had to pass, which, forgive me if I'm wrong, is more or less a synonym for a quota.

and yes, you did suggest that handwriting was a metric. When I stated that poor handwriting would be a major hinderment to a standardized test that didn't include bubble filling, you suggested that they would have had to have learned clear handwriting. It's not a strawman at all.

"Again you're talking about stupidity on the part of the organization doing the testing not a flaw in the concept of testing to a standard.  If the kid can't communicate clearly he's failing communication tests long before he's failing a biology test because he can't write clearly. " YOU said that, in response to comments I made about handwriting proplems. Again, with writing so that it's difficult to read the numbers you said "And as for the 7s looking like 1s, under a system where the kids are tested to a standard a kid whose 7s looked like 1s would still be in the first grade for that very reason."

I have neither misrepresented you nor misunderstood what you said. If these things were not your intent, then you haven't passed the written communication skills portion of your curriculum, and need to be in elementary school.

I think that you have a very pessimistic (and inaccurate) view of the school system. I can understand that about Utah, which scores relatively low in the rankings, but it's not the case for every school system. we have soem very bright kids, and some very wonderful teachers out there. YOU turned out all right. *I* turned out all right. so did most of the people here.

And approving plans and observing the class DOES hold the teacher accountable for his work. The only difference is that it holds the teacher accountable for what he DOES, not what he cannot control

and no, I don't think that bad missionaries necessarily have less baptism. I knew some very disobedient missionaries who knew little about how to teach who had many baptisms.

Now, you haven't addresed my last major issue, where I asked why you had such a problem with teachers objecting to having more standardized tests that don't measure even what you want to measure? why is that such a problem? This is why I think you overstate the case of how bad the system is. YOu have teachers who are trying to have more time to teach and work with the children, rather than take more useless tests, and you are angry with them for that. The unions aren't objecting to your proposal, they're objecting to more bubble-filling, useless tests.

And even if they were, I don't find it irrational at all for them to object to it. i disagree with you, but that does not mean I am being irrational about it.

[Oldie Black Witch]

You know, I'm rather amused that this thread on why RPG campaigns don't make for good trade fiction has devolved into a discussion on standardized testing.

[Skar]

 ADD kids:
They weren't diagnosed by [gasp]testing[/gasp] were they?  It's OK, you can admit it.

Quotas:
You're right.  You've caught me in a misstep.  I did in fact claim that I had not mentioned quotas when I did say that certain numbers had to pass.  Forgive me.  I had an irrational negative reaction to the emotional baggage I have buried under the word "quota".  Yes I think quotas ought to be applied to the results of a teacher's work.  In the same breath I'd like to add that I am not in favor of stupid quotas that don't reflect the reality of the teacher's situation.

Handwriting:
Again, you've caught me.  I was trying to imply that the problem with bad hand-writing and the 7s and 1s would have been caught and corrected in the first grade, not that I believed people with bad hand-writing should never be advanced to 2nd.  I don't believe that a person capable of critical thought can be incapable of drawing letters clearly. But, since you claim to be such a person I will say that the appeal process I mentioned way back in the beginning when I first proposed the distributed grading system would catch and correct the problem first try.

I have neither misrepresented you nor misunderstood what you said. If these things were not your intent, then you haven't passed the written communication skills portion of your curriculum, and need to be in elementary school.

I think that you have a very pessimistic (and inaccurate) view of the school system. I can understand that about Utah, which scores relatively low in the rankings, but it's not the case for every school system. we have soem very bright kids, and some very wonderful teachers out there. YOU turned out all right. *I* turned out all right. so did most of the people here.

And your view of the school system is more accurate than mine because... I disagree with you?

And approving plans and observing the class DOES hold the teacher accountable for his work. The only difference is that it holds the teacher accountable for what he DOES, not what he cannot control

It doesn't address the possibility that the teacher and the evaluator both learned the same stupid and ineffective techniques.  If the teacher is judged solely on his ability to match the techniques taught in educational programs there is no way to discover if those techniques are bad. Ineffective techniques produce unlearned kids but the teacher gets glowing reviews.   And any teacher that tries new techniques in an attempt to reach the kids that don't respond to the book techniques gets bad reviews.  

and no, I don't think that bad missionaries necessarily have less baptism. I knew some very disobedient missionaries who knew little about how to teach who had many baptisms.

Are you now saying that the skills of the teacher are irrelevant?  Let me get this straight.  With this addition to your analogy you're saying that the educational state of a child at the end of the year doesn't reflect the skills of the teacher AND that the skill of the teacher has no effect on the educational state of the student at the end of the year.   Really?

Last major issue:

I understand your objection to my objection.  I don't believe the teachers are really interested in having more time to teach and work with the children for a couple of reasons.  1.  The standardized testing we have now does not take up that much time.  My teachers wasted more time by being unprepared than was taken up by state testing by an order of magnitude.  
2. They offer no alternative solutions.  Their results are currently very poor and getting worse and their response is to suggest that results ought not to be measured?  Come on.  There's a rat in there somewhere.


You have not answered my main question either.  How can you expect good results when the employment and compensation of the teacher are completely insulated from  those results?

[Skar]

You know, I'm rather amused that this thread on why RPG campaigns don't make for good trade fiction has devolved into a discussion on standardized testing.

Yes, it is amusing but I am enjoying myself immensely.

[JP Dogberry]

I am incapable of writing legibly.

The best testing system I've seen so far is Queenslands for the end of Secondary school. Over two years, the students undergo a choice of subjects that are approved by a board. The teachers teach these subjects however they want, so long as it follows the outcomes set out in the curriculum. They design their own assessment tasks and give them to the class, and mark them, and these marks form part of the total assessment which are sent away to a board. Lot's of maths and such is done on these numbers so we don't get students excelling because of easy or hard marking teachers. At the end, students undergo a long, standardised test designed to prove they learnt what they were supposed to. This test cannot be studied for, as it tests skills and abilities, not facts and stuff. For example, writing something in repsonse to stimulus materials, or problem solving tasks.

[Skar]

Sounds pretty close to what I was looking for.  Is this destined to doom teachers to being punished for their wicked wicked, and stupid, students?