Give light and they will find their own way

A bill Sen. Tim Burchett and I are sponsoring this year would allow parents to see a teachers performance rating on standardized tests. The bill is featured in this WBIR story.

Many teachers don't like the idea of parents knowing if, or how well they are meeting set minimum standards for the children. If teachers don't want parents to know how they are performing then why should it be different for students? Why give tests at all? or for that matter grades?

Why? Because grades do matter. If one teachers students are constantly failing and another teachers are doing well, a parent will work to see that the better preforming teacher is rewarded. The failing teacher retrained or bounced out.

I saw this happen in my own education. My mother was a teacher at my high school. One year I was signed up to be in a physics class of a well known disastrous teacher. He had tenure and wasn't going anywhere. He spent most classes talking about his liquor store he ran at night. At the end of the year most of the kids in his class failed the standardized tests. My mom knew his history and got me transferred out of his class before the year started.

Sadly, most regular parents have no clue as to the quality of a teacher and no ability to even get one until it is too late.

The fear that a teacher will "teach to the test" does not bother me. Tests are a MINIMUM that a student should know. If they are not getting that down then maybe the teacher needs to spend more time teaching to the test and less on their own personal agenda.