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According to Molly Worthen's article in The New York Times, The Misguided Drive to Measure 'Learning Outcomes':
"[...] In 2018, more and more university administrators want campuswide, quantifiable data that reveal what skills students are learning. Their desire has fed a bureaucratic behemoth known as learning outcomes assessment. This elaborate, expensive, supposedly data-driven analysis seeks to translate the subtleties of the classroom into PowerPoint slides packed with statistics — in the hope of deflecting the charge that students pay too much for degrees that mean too little. [...]"
But apparently, there is little to show for tons of money and effort expended to gather data on what students are really learning or adapting curricula to their actual needs.
Mr. Erik Gilbert, a professor of history at Arkansas State University, who has criticized the methods, said to the author: 'Maybe all your students have full-time jobs, but that's something you can't fix, even though that's really the core problem. Instead, you're expected to find some small problem, like students don't understand historical chronology, so you might add a reading to address that. You're supposed to make something up every semester, then write up a narrative.'
As Frank Furedi, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told the author about the situation in Britain: 'It's a bit like the old Soviet Union. You speak two languages. You do a performance for the sake of the auditors, but in reality, you carry on.'
As the author puts it: 'If we describe college courses as mainly delivery mechanisms for skills to please a future employer [...] We end up using the language of the capitalist marketplace and speak to our students as customers rather than fellow thinkers. They deserve better. [...] Producing thoughtful, talented graduates is not a matter of focusing on market-ready skills. It's about giving students an opportunity that most of them will never have again in their lives: the chance for serious exploration of complicated intellectual problems, the gift of time in an institution where curiosity and discovery are the source of meaning.'
A lengthy read, but worthwhile. Are we preparing current students better than in the past or are we simply siphoning money out of them? Yesteryear, a degree was a sure bet to a better life, nowadays, it doesn't mean as much. Are the education methods lacking or is the surplus of graduates to blame for useless degrees?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @06:17PM (3 children)
Heh, here we see the AC's story fall to pieces. Yup, sounds like military dumbass goes in with good intentions but completely unprepared for inner city school conditions. They are horrifying, but here we see the symptoms of cultural warfare brought to light. Blame Nixon, blame all the republicunts who disenfranchised black communities. Blame the business people who won't hire black people except for the worst jobs.
The poverty cycle is a nasty piece of work, the farther your drop into poverty the less likely you are to work your way out of it. There are tons of kids at inner city schools who actively get worse grades than they should because being smart gets the shit kicked out of you.
Hell, I was a white kid in suburbia and still experienced issues because I was smart. Throw in some real gang members and a ton of wannabes? Ugh, life would suck.
Anyway, teaching is hard and standardized tests and performance reviews add another level of stress to a VERY stressful job. I left teaching because I could earn more money for less stress, and no summer vacation isn't a walk in the park. Due to low pay many teachers work over the summer anyway, and besides until you're on year 5-10 you use the summers to improve your lessons. Teachers get the major shaft in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @11:35PM
Nothing changes that fact that the principal hated non-black people, oddly including in that category an actual immigrant from Africa.
Never mind the students and my brother, and whatever qualifications they may have or lack. The principal is not about to fairly do performance evaluations of teachers because he is a racist.
Oh, BTW, every horrible black-majority hellhole city in the USA is run by democrats. I'm sure the democrats like to blame republicans, but that doesn't fit the evidence.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 03 2018, @12:07AM (1 child)
Don't misunderestimate what people learn in the military. Like, they might figure out that the whole thing is a giant scam, designed to keep their idle hands occupied (or dead, that works too), busy trying to suppress nations whose main sin was to have large oil reserves.
Do you recall one time General and Presidential candidate Wesley Clark? You might think the military brass is all pro 2nd amendment jar heads, gung ho to smite terrorists and Muslims, eager to go down in history as military geniuses ranking up there with Sun Tzu, Hannibal of Carthage, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Robert E. Lee, and George Patton. (Note that Hannibal, Lee, and Napoleon were all on the losing side, and Al rather conveniently died early.) And therefore they are all in lockstep with the Republicans. Nope. Some are, of course. But lots of them realize they're tools being wielded by politicians who have an angle which is typically money of course. General Clark ran as a Democrat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @04:50AM
Your comment about generals being "on the losing side" and therefore not worthy of adulation is off the mark.
At least in the cases of Hannibal and Lee, the deck was stacked against them from the beginning; the opposing side was far more numerous and better supplied.
They still punched far above their weight militarily. It is worth studying them for that reason.