Schools should prepare students using COMPASS bar

Editor, The Times:

The transformation of education is bigger than these tests [“Mixed test results for state’s students,” Opinion, Sept. 2]. In the state of Washington, all community and technical colleges and some four-year colleges use the COMPASS Test to determine readiness and placement in college classes.

About 80 percent of incoming college freshmen must take some form of remediation in order to progress in any postsecondary education. How much money and time could we save without having to remediate recent high-school graduates?

Please. Let us build an articulated system from middle school to high school and, from there, to any trade school, technical school or college.

We aren’t ready yet, but in this global economy we are finally running out of time. It took nearly 20 years to determine that the WASL wasn’t the answer. Competing globally doesn’t allow us another 20 [years]. If COMPASS is the bar, then prepare our students at that level now.

— Sherryl Gunnels, Seattle

Student test scores are poor measures of teacher quality

Dan Goldhaber in “Teacher accountability: getting ahead of the curve” [Opinion, Aug. 30] points out some of the problems with using growth on standardized tests (value-added analyses) to measure effectiveness. He points out that small differences may not be statistically significant and that factors other than the teacher influence test scores. Goldhaber, however, still supports using value-added methods “as one means of judging teacher performance.”

They shouldn’t be used at all. Studies show that value-added scores are unstable and inaccurate. The same teacher can get very different scores from one year to the next, and different reading tests produce different value-added results. Also, test scores can be artificially pumped up by teaching test-taking strategies.

I am opposed to using student test scores as part of teacher evaluations, not because I am opposed to evaluation, but because they are poor measures of teacher quality.

— Stephen Krashen, professor at Rossier School of Education, USC, Los Angeles, Calif.

Budget cuts that affect electives do a disservice to students

The budget cuts for Seattle Public Schools have been very severe and prices for students, like school lunches and athletic participation, have been rising. I believe these rising prices must cease, for I have noticed the amount of student participation in school events and overall spirit have been declining. With increased prices, students are avoiding school lunches, causing the price to increase even more.

Additional elective classes are also suffering, such as drama and music education; these prices rising means fewer students have connections to their schools and have trouble identifying with them, causing kids to care less about their education and development. Increasing these prices would bring in an overall negative affect for the budget as well as on the students suffering from them.

I believe this problem should be solved without directly affecting students and their education and development —this will, and does, stunt learning and school experiences.

— Joe Brockman, Seattle

Pay for the best

I keep reading the debate on whether we should rate school teachers on their “productivity.” If your intent is to keep only the teachers who produce the students with the highest test scores, beware of unintended results.

The savviest teachers will lobby for the best students from the previous year’s crop. Why ask for trouble? The worst students will then end up with the rookie teachers, who will then be rated the lowest and be forced out by this standard. All teachers will teach to the test, never mind any hope of actually educating our kids.

Another question I have is, how do you know whether a higher test score is because the teacher was better or the student was better? If you do not test the kids both at the beginning of the school year and at the end, how can you tell whether there was any improvement? There is no change if you only have one data point.

How about we cut to the chase on this debate? You want the best, you pay for the best. Try this experiment. Choose a random school in the district. Announce that you will begin paying teachers there $100,000 per year, plus incentive pay, for teaching the worst students from the previous year’s classes. Stand back and watch the school flourish.

— Doug Schwartz, Lake Stevens

Parents and students must bear responsibility as well

Norman Rice’s column in the Aug. 24 Seattle Times has been nagging at me for days [“Union, district must come together for kids,” Opinion, Aug. 24].

I do agree with much that he wrote, but he left out two more groups that should be held “accountable for student academic growth.” Those two groups are the parents of the students and the students themselves.

Little effective learning takes place in the classroom when students bear no responsibility for their own learning and when their parents do not instill in them the understanding that they must arrive in the classroom willing to learn.

— Diana Wagner, Freeland