>I've heard of other schools also doing "real-time" scoring to grade teachers and catch kids falling behind early.
Why would this be a good thing?
Kids learn at different rates. I submit that the core of the problem in education is the expectation that kids should ever be forced to learn in lock-step.
Kids are developmentally all over the map on a dozen axes. I've read many stories of "unschooled" kids not learning to read until they were 12 or older, and then learning to read past "grade level" in anywhere from hours to weeks. One kid who avoided ALL math until he was 15 managed to learn standard math through High School Geometry in less than six weeks of intensive study (with a tutor), once he was internally motivated to learn it.
Given that he wasn't particularly gifted in math, think about how many hours of "instruction" in a subject he didn't like that he would have had to sit through "for his own good." And how bad he would have felt about himself if he were forced into "remedial" math classes. And the attitudes that would have formed about math.
Similarly, kids who just didn't care enough to learn to read would have been thrown into remedial classes in first grade in some schools. In first grade!
Kids that learn at their own pace (say, using Khan Academy or equivalent, or by actively unschooling them) actually learn the material better, and, more importantly, don't end up learning that "learning is boring." Which unfortunately is what almost all schools teach.
The job of "Teacher" should morph into "Mentor," and all learning should be student-driven. I actually doubt Khan Academy is "good enough" to do what I'm suggesting here, but something in that vein should replace the current broken system.
Learning shouldn't be adversarial; if it weren't, then rating teachers (i.e., mentors) would just involve asking the students whether they were helpful in their learning.
And no, I'm not just spouting utopian ideals that don't work in real life; there are thousands of families using this teaching method to good effect, producing happy, intelligent, well-educated and well-adjusted young adults (I've met several now), as well as a category of school that uses a similar teaching/mentoring technique successfully. [1]
“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”
This is a good idea, but it can also lead to burnout. Our kids take a lot of assessments (too many, IMHO), and they start to get cynical really fast. Our school does a comprehensive assessment at the beginning and end of the year to track overall progress (in addition to smaller-scale techniques like the ones you mentioned), which would be fine except that there are so many government-mandated tests* that also have to be given that students start to burn out.
Most professional educators have a pretty good grasp on the pedagogical practices that stress small, repetitive checks for understanding, which-- you're right-- works far better than massive, mind-numbing tests that demand significant student effort.
*Of course, we get the results from these so late that it doesn't give us the ability to make on-the-fly judgements.
I definitely agree there. Just the other day, one of my mother's kindergarten students was drawing pictures of her and her teaching assistant and decided to caption the assistant's with "she helps us with our work" and my mother's with "she tests us."
"Of course, we get the results from these so late that it doesn't give us the ability to make on-the-fly judgements."
And isn't that a bit bizarre? At least the multiple choice portion could be in your email in three days, if these were seriously intended to be used for any sort of guidance.
Testing throughout the year and measuring performance based on that seems like a bad idea to me. When I was in school the only important tests were at the end of the year (the tests everyone in the country would take at the same time: GCSE, AS Level, A2 Level etc.). Therefore I only worked hard for them and put little effort into other tests throughout the year as there were no long-term consequences for doing badly. So the only good way to judge a teacher based on performance would be to look at the final exam results and to ignore the results throughout the year.
