How can the tax paying public be sure that teachers are doing their job well?
It is hard to gauge a teacher's "effectiveness" (if it should even be called that), from a typical tax payer's point of view. This is one of the biggest debates, because a teacher's progress is seen in the classroom, rather than by the public. If the tax payers could sit in the classroom and watch the teacher operate, they would understand the immense amount of work that happens every day. Even the parent's of students are able to sit with the teacher and talk about classwork during open house. Unfortunately, the average tax payer (without children) would not attend open house, and many parent's are unable to attend open house for their own children.
The obvious response to this challenge would be through standardized testing, which opens up a whole different can of worms. I personally don't think that standardized testing gives teachers the amount of credit they deserve. At the same time, it does provide a standard to compare teachers and schools across the country. If there was a way to demonstrate the amount of work that a teacher does, in a way that the general public would be able to access it, that would be ideal.
One option would be for the teacher's to form public blogs or newsletters for the public to see what is going on. This could display upcoming lesson plans, results of previous plans and exciting discoveries that the students have made withing the last month or so. In addition, perhaps, to standardized testing, these newsletters could offer another side of what's going on in the classroom. At the same time, there is no guarantee that every taxpayer would read or subscribe to these newsletters, and teacher's probably don't have a lot of extra time to compile a newsletter or update a blog on a regular basis.
Another option would be for schools to hold an open house for the community. This would allow tax payers to understand the conditions that teachers are working with, and give them an opportunity to talk directly with teachers or administrators. The teachers could showcase student work, explain student growth and talk about their plans for the next quarter. This would be similar to the blogs or newsletter, but again only tax payers who are directly concerned would attend these meetings. There is also the problem that people might not be able to attend the meeting at a specific time or day.
Although both of these options have their positive and negative points, I feel like they offer a different form of evaluation than standardized testing. Our society holds numbers higher than the quality of work that they can't see. I think that standardized tests are important in some aspects, but that there is a lot that the general public does not know. Hopefully, we can find a better way to evaluate schools that would show how hard the teachers and students work on a daily basis, in addition to successful test scores.
