by Lisa Mcelroy Hunter

Created on: May 19, 2009

In order for teachers to be held accountable for the success or failure of their students on standardized tests, one must first establish a starting point from which to establish progress. That is the first problem with the concept of student success and failure as a measure of teacher success. It all stems from a desire to view education as a production line, as a business where the raw materials come in, and at the end, a finished product is the result.

The problem with viewing education as a business with a finished product at the culmination of the education experience is that it assumes that the raw materials - the students - all enter school at the same level. Imagine you are running a company that makes widgets. You have contract for your widget raw materials with both Company A and Company B, because neither company can provide you with enough widgets to satisfy your production demands. You have signed a five-year contract with both companies, and unfortunately, your legal team is a little less attentive than they should be, because there is binding language that ties you into this contract for the duration - no loopholes. It goes along well for the first few months. Company A consistently provides you with excellent raw materials; however, Company B starts to slack after the first two months, and begins to send you sub-standard raw materials that demand a great deal of preparation before they are ready to enter the production line. Because of the contract language, you are stuck using Company B's raw materials, regardless of their sub-standard quality.

Company A, in the education setting, consists of the parents who prepare their children well for school. They have read to them from infancy; they have sent them to preschool; they have provided them with a wealth of interaction and enriching experiences that have prepared the way for the child to learn. They have counted objects ad nauseum; they have read the same story every night for weeks on end because it was the favourite story; they have exposed their child to music, and art, and creative activities that have broadened that child's horizon.

Company B, in the education setting, are all the rest of the children. They are the children who come from lives of abject poverty, whose lives are so wrapped up in the struggle to survive that they have no time for self-actualization or education. They are the children who come from families that are rife with abuse, neglect, drug and alcohol

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