"Maxprop" wrote
Are you saying that teachers should have no accountability or
responsibility
for their performances. ... Why should teachers be any different, or at
least not held to
any particular standards?

There is a enormous but temporary problem switching to accountability.

When I taught Ma Bell's schools students were given a "final" before each
course to establish what they already knew. The delta between those scores
and their scores on the real final told us how much each individual had
learned and the average of all the students deltas was MY score as a
teacher. That's fair enough.

But it's not the way it happens in public schools. Under Carter the US DOE
ruled that the primary goal of schools and teachers was to enhance student
self esteem. The A-F grade system went out the window because it embarassed
low performers. Even wrong answers had to be praised "No Sammy 1+1 isn't 3
but that's a very good guess, here's your gold star!". Naturally that led
many good teachers to leave the profession. I know - I hired a lot of them!
That goal has now been replaced by two somewhat conflicting goals: first, No
Child Left Behind and now Standardized Tests.

There was only one way to impliment NCLB - slow each class' speed to that of
the slowest learner. That caused two problems. First, the curriculum
couldn't be completed and second the best and brightest kids got bored then
disruptive and ended up drugged up on ritilan til they drooled their way
thru classes. So guess what happened when schools were told that these
students had to pass standard tests. The cannot! The slowest never could
and now the brighter ones have been drugged down to their level. And if the
teacher cannot magically get them to pass then the school looses its federal
money. So now there is mucho pressure on teachers to cheat on these exams
else the school won't have enough money to pay them.

So here you are facing 30 kids who are too ignorant of the subject to pass
any test but have extermrly high self esteem (Wadda you mean it's all about
learning - it's all about ME) but if they don't pass the school looses its
accreditation and you loose your job.