A recent opinion by Andy Solon called for a performance-based pay scale, but such an option is dangerous and could result in losing teachers and making our kids dumb.
The problem is that teachers would not be judged on their own performance but the performance of their students based on standardized testing. This allows too much error. A doctor should not have their performance judged on how many patients live compared to the how many die. There are too many variables that occur to have a reliable performance scale.
By stressing standardized tests we have pushed our children to drop art class in order to practice taking tests. It seems logical that if students practice taking tests enough they will do better but ultimately not be any more knowledgeable.
By using standardized tests as a gauge of education we are pressuring our kids to memorize facts, which results in them missing out on the end goal of education, which is to become knowledgeable persons. True knowledge does not mean knowing a million facts, but, rather, the internalization of meaningful information that one uses in every day decisions on his or her route to being a successful citizen.
I have yet to see a correlation between good test scores and future success and until there is we can not push our schools to dumb down our children into encyclopedias and pressure our teachers to leave behind “hopeless” children who will not pass a standardized test.