Ohio 3rd graders who fail state test not promoted. But they CAN be promoted by not taking test.

[Reader Rabbit]

32. " The simplest, most straightforward way" = false equivalence

Education and learning are neither simple, nor straightforward. I suspect your experience and training as an engineer prevents you from understanding that. There are few professions so diametrically opposed as teaching K-12 and engineering!

Here's the thing:

We are not talking about making widgets; we are talking about getting thinking, feeling, sentient beings to learn. It's not about the product teachers provide, it's about the connections they make with their students.

Case Study
My brother and I are only 18 months apart, so we often had the same teachers as we progressed through school. Almost without exception, the teachers who had the greatest impact on my learning were not the ones who had the greatest impact on his, and vice versa. In fact, even the only teacher we had the same opinion of—we both hated her guts—did not elicit the same academic performance from us. Both our emotional responses were the same—"I'll show you, you heinous bitch!"—but our behavior responses were exactly the opposite. My brother shut down and did the bare minimum necessary to keep himself out of trouble with our parents. I, on the other hand, pulled out all the academic stops and excelled in her class, so that I could spit in her eye (figuratively speaking, of course).

So even in a scenario in which two siblings (nature) have roughly the same home life (nurture), teachers will get vastly different results.

Students are human. Teachers are human. To evaluate either with an assessment that dissects and denies their humanity is not valid.

Epilogue: My brother is now an engineer, while I am a middle school teacher.